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ODD HOURS 



OF 



A PHYSICIAN. 



ODD HOURS 



A PHYSICIAN, 




ARBY. 



/BY 
JOHN D 

f 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
1871. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



PACK 

Antecedents 7 

Success lo 

Spending 17 

Principles 28 

Law 43 

Correlation 51 

The Philosopher's Stone 81 

To-day 99 

Living 119 

Wise and Otherwise 143 

Utopia 166 

In the Country 199 

Addendum 241 



(V) 



OddH 



OURS OF A Jr HYSICIAN, 



ANTECEDENTS. 

A BOOK, as a man, has antecedents. Acquaint- 
ance with either is not, perhaps, better to be 
commenced than by learning something of such pre- 
associations. 

The antecedents of this little volume are found in the 
circumstances, that the author having written a book 
which was not without a satisfactory share of success, it 
brought from his publisher a request for a second ; and 
this so persuasively worded — as reference was had to the 
banker — that to have denied it would have been to 
admit that a person may be afflicted with the cacoethes 
scribendi, and at the same time be insusceptible to the 
solid arguments of the book-makers, — a thing, so far as 
the author can learn, never yet known, and not well to 
be made a precedent by anybody. 

Terms settled (it is comfortable to have all responsi- 
bility on the back of the publisher), it remained simply 
to decide as to the nature of the new book, and to 
secure consent to the employment upon the title-page 
of a name differing from that upon the first book, as 
well as that on the record page of the author's family 
Bible ; not that a nom de plume designates an especial 
modesty, or is indicative of any particular indifference ; 

(7) 



8 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

on the contrary, it may be doubted if such shielding of 
one's identity is not rather of questionable significa- 
tion. Without consuming pages, however, in the dis- 
cussion of this matter, it may be asserted, without fear 
of successful contradiction, that nowadays, as every- 
body runs into print, the private station has become 
the seat of honor, and one may not be rebuked in de- 
siring to be classed with the most respectable company. 

Again, one may not be averse to giving forth 
thoughts, good, bad, or indifferent, as they may prove, 
yet not deem it necessary to the influence of the writing 
that \Xi propria persona he be associated with them. If 
a thing be good, what odds who created it ? And if it be 
bad, certainly the less it has to support it the better. 
Still another reason which may influence a writer in 
disguising the ego is, that in this very practical age the 
world has come to judge of a man by what it is pleased 
to term his stability. A man must be inferred to be 
thinking of one thing all the time, — ^'sticking to his 
work," as we have it. A doctor is not to don a straw 
hat, neither is he to take off his black coat. A black- 
smith had much better set fire to his smithy than let a 
patron find a work on Paleology upon his workbench. 

Everybody thinks, thinks all kinds of thoughts, and 
about all kinds of things, and the thoughts of every- 
body are interesting to somebody. The thoughts of 
Socrates, and of his pupil Plato, interest the world, 
and have done so for the past two thousand years. 
A village politician or metaphysician is not without 
his share of auditors, even though the coffee-bags and 
barrels in the back part of the country store furnish 
abundance of seat-room for all of them. I will write 



ANTECEDENTS. p 

down my odd thoughts, then, I say, and these shall 
make the book. If they make not a good book, nor an 
interesting one, I can only regret it, consoling myself 
with the reflection that there must at least be found 
people enough on the same plane with it to compensate 
the publisher ; and he satisfied, I am sure I should be. 
One cannot expect everybody to be his friends, or that 
overmany people should be able even to find half an 
hour's entertainment in his company. The book, then, 
is to be the odd thoughts of odd" hours. Neander, or 
the village optimist, as you may find it. If it shall 
please you to sit down with me, we can at least com- 
pare *'life thoughts." 



SUCCESS. 

'^'nr^HE whole secret of a man's success in life," 
JL said a lecturer at a college commencement, 
"is to be found in three words, — Choose, Begin, 
Stick;" and in his conclusions he was, I am con- 
vinced, about right. 

A man engaged in a calling for which he has neither 
predilection nor talent has, in his pursuit, simply a life 
of toil : no ambition inspires him, neither does satisfac- 
tion in what he accomplishes cheer him ; the life em- 
ployment of an individual should constitute the pleasure 
of the life, thus overcoming the first, greatest, and 
generally most lasting drawback, — the retardation of 
friction. 

To know what one may like, and what he shall con- 
tinue to like, should be felt to be of vital consequence, 
so far as the selection of a pursuit is concerned ; and 
from the necessities of the relations of "short lives with 
long arts," it is seen to be a matter which, in its settle- 
ment, should have as little delay as possible. For some, 
happily, this question is settled by the nature oPtheir 
organization, some one faculty having development in 
that excess which makes to the ruling passion or incli- 
nation all others subservient. Thus, we would say of 
Buffon that he was born a naturalist ; or of Leon, 
the delineator of Sappho, that he was made by nature 
a painter; of Daedalus, that he grew an architect. 
Lionardo, the Italian, as a child exhibited such power 
(lo) 



SUCCESS. II 

In art, that when, in a picture of Christ's Baptism, he 
painted for his preceptor the figure of an angel, Ve- 
rocchio threw down his brush and declared, in his cha- 
grin, that he would never take it up again, *'for that a 
child had excelled him." Titian, when in pinafores, 
made fame by creating pictures from the expressed 
juice of flowers. Murillo, as a boy, was an artist 
whose works never lacked sale. The genius of Ameri- 
ghi was so near the surface, that a single month at' 
color-grinding with a Milan artist converted him into 
Caravaggio. 

Genius, such as these exampled, is temperament; 
physiologically speaking, this is certainly the right 
name to call it by, — and men so constituted can no 
more be else than what they come out than may the worm 
of the cocoon save itself from becoming the butterfly, 
or than may men of large viscera deny their lymphatic 
relations, or the man of nerve repudiate activity. 

But, intellectually speaking, the majority of men are 
without temperaments, or, if not this, they are at least 
not sufficiently one-sided to have the peculiarity remark 
itself. For all, however, there are points about even 
these stronger than other points, — parts which will en- 
dure the stress of burdens better than other parts. 
These are the men that "choosing" concerns. 

HOW SHALL SUCH MEN CHOOSE? 

If a man might select to go to some particular place 
led to by various ways, he naturally desires to take that 
one which may be most in consonance with his habits 
and inclinations. Now, if to him all the roads be alike 



12 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

unknown, he may only inform himself concerning their 
various attractions by two means : either he may learn 
of others who have journeyed over the roads, or, other- 
wise, he must travel each for himself. The first of 
these would, without doubt, be the most time-saving. 
The second, however, seems, by common consent, in 
America at least, to be the adopted way. It is, I sup- 
pose, in obedience to the injunction, **Try all things, 
and hold fast that which is good." This latter plan 
has, without doubt, its advantages, which none may 
dispute. It has, however, unfortunately been allowed 
to consume the whole life of many a man. Whatever 
may be the manner of the choice, such choice would 
seem important or unimportant as the man is with or 
without temperament. 

SUCCESS. 

A wise choice in occupation always, and to every 
character of individual, considers the length and breadth 
of a work. It has often enough come even to my own 
observation to see grand men stranded by having 
started their boats in a wrong direction, running up 
stream, with the water growing shallower and shallower, 
instead of down towards the river and towards the sea. 
One of the finest minds among my acquaintances lies 
high and dry upon a carpenter's bench. Had his boat 
been started right, it would to-day have been on the 
highest and most vital wave of the ocean of meta- 
physics. I have seen shopkeepers measuring tape, 
bound in tape, — bound as fast as was Laocoon in the 
folds of the serpents, and being crushed as hastily out of 



SUCCESS. 13 

the joys of living, — who, had their business been to 
measure the lines of the universe, would have invented 
planispheres with Hipparchus, or taught the principles 
of trigonometrical calculations with Ptolemy. 

BEGIN. 

This is the second word in the secret of our lecturer. 
A choice, however good it may be, is, of course, to no 
purpose without a beginning of work. Some persons 
are good enough in the making of the choice, but they 
are all bad in the making of a beginning ; without a 
beginning there can be no middle or end to a thing. 

The time that a man shall begin a thing may be a 
matter of circumstances ; thus, I once knew a young 
man who had to struggle through five years of labor in 
a blacksmith's shop before money sufficient could be 
saved to buy the tickets matriculating him into a medi- 
cal school. Doctor Samuel Jackson, so long the 
eminent Professor of Physiology in the University of 
Pennsylvania, sold medicine behind the counter of the 
apothecary until forty years old. A famous publisher, 
whose choice was the ownership of a great newspaper, 
had to toil twenty years as office-boy, clerk, printer, 
and book-maker, before his work could be commenced. 
But a time to begin that may be recognized by every- 
body is, "The earliest time possible." Nothing is 
more adverse to success than putting a thing off ; not 
only does it shorten the span of life, but it shortens and 
debilitates the nature of a man. He who acts on the 
political motto of Talleyrand is apt to find to-morrow 
a day that never arrives. Just this moment there comes 



14 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



to my mind an artist for whose abilities I have great 
respect. The choice of the man is to paint a great 
historical picture, but each day he waits on the morrow 
for an order, and he has so waited, day after day, for 
years. Yet in these years hours have been profitlessly 
spent, quite sufficient in number, I am sure, to have 
created his image. This man is unwisely putting off 
his beginning. The sooner after a choice is made a 
beginning is commenced, the better. Begin to-day, if 
so it may be, to-day is sure. 

STICK. 

No one thing has more effect upon a result than 
sticking. The aphorism ''that the trickling drop wears 
away the stone," is not, by any means, too old to deny 
it a repetition : to stick is to conquer a success. One 
may not, perhaps, imagine a thing that will not yield 
before sticking. To see a man change from point to 
point is to get his measure without asking, and is to 
prognose his future without needing a gift of prophecy. 
Sticking gave to Kepler the laws of planetary motion. 
Of Luther it has been remarked, ''That it was a great 
miracle a poor friar should be able to stand against the 
Pope, and that it was even a greater that he should 
prevail." In an age when the voice of the church pos- 
sessed among the people the influence of God's voice 
itself, Leo X., in bull, solemnly condemned and ex- 
communicated Luther. But the reformer heeded the 
interruption so little that he was even spurred by it to 
the conception of the idea of a church of his own. 
When Charles V. summoned Luther to Worms, and 



SUCCESS. 15 

emperor and princes united in his condemnation, it 
produced in Wartburg Castle a translation of the New 
Testament, — never was there recantation — never vacil- 
lation. Sticking resulted in the Reformation. Huy- 
gens, by sticking, evolved the truth of the application 
of the pendulum for the corrections of the irregulari- 
ties of the clock, having first discovered that the vi- 
brations made in arcs of a cycloid, however unequal 
they were in extent, were all equal in time. Galileo 
and Huygens revolve with time, as the two hands go 
around the face of the clock they created. 

Sticking always results in something, — it results in 
the man doing his work. Whether the work be famous 
or infamous, useful or useless, depends, first, and most 
importantly, as the individual is concerned, on the 
choice he has made; it depends, secondly, upon cir- 
cumstances. Every man owes it to the relations of his 
life to discharge a duty; and he is bound, in con- 
tributing to the common fund, to do his best. What 
such best shall be is not always what one might desire. 
But a man of two talents who brings other two, is every 
whit as manly a worker as he who, starting with ten, 
increases them to twenty. A true judgment of a man 
considers not the result of his work more than the 
tools with which a result is obtained. Newton, in 
adding gravitation to the laws worked out by Kepler, 
deserved not the credit of the latter, — the stem of the 
apple had at least had a nick put into it in the ''Intro- 
duct, ad mot Martis." Never did Giotto more impress 
Cimabue than when he showed him the crude drawing 
of the sheep, made by the shepherd boy with a bit of 
broken slate upon the smooth rock. Or, perhaps, never 



1 6 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

did Da Vinci exhibit the force of genius to the inspi- 
ration of others more fully than when, on the fig-tree 
stick, he executed his work of the Gorgon, the snakes, 
lizards, and toads, which the peasant was afraid to 
touch. 

A noble mind wavers never in doubt of itself; the 
estimate of its power, and of its work, is not from with- 
out, but always comes from within. It asks not, neither 
heeds what the world says; but in w^hatever situation it 
finds its place, it recognizes that "■ station may not honor 
man, but it is man who honors a station." And that it 
very well may be that 

" More true joy Marcellus, exiled, feels 
Than Caesar, with a Senate at his heels." 



<c ^'T"^ 



SPENDING. 

IS pleasant," says Cowper, in his suggestive 
poem of ''The Task," 

"Through the loopholes of retreat 
To peep out at the world. To see the stir 
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd ; 
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates, 
At a safe distance, where the dying sound 
Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear." 

Life at twenty and life at forty, — there is a great dif- 
ference. Which has the advantage is only, perhaps, 
to be answered by individual experience. Twenty 
years ago I read Alphonse de Lamartine's "Raphael," 
and pulse to pulse did my heart beat with his creation. 
I, too, floated over still lakes in dying sunsets. I, too, 
caught the soft music of the sphere as it came from 
ruby lips and pearly gateways. I, too, breathed the 
odors of Araby as a warm breath swept over my cheek. 

Twenty years ago, just after finishing the reading of 
this book, it was carried off by a fair friend. And at 
forty, on my very birthday, was it brought back to me. 
At forty, then, I re-read Raphael. Alas and alack ! the 
lakes had grown rough and damp, the sunsets were 
tame and cold ; upon pearly teeth I had seen sordes, 
and ruby lips had shown the blush of rouge ; odors 
had grown faint, or, what amounted to the same thing, 
my nerves had diminished in their sensibility. Then 

2 (17) 



1 8 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

I cast aside forever Raphael, and said to myself, The 
time of the lake is passed, and you are upon the river ; 
and, even from the river must you go on to the things 
of the sea. 

* * * * por an hour I have been sitting, this 
page before me, making rings of smoke, and watching 
them as suddenly they whisk through a crack made by 
the lowered sash. * * * ^he lines commencing 
the pa2:)er I indited as a text for something I desired 
to write about life ; but through some influence almost 
beyond my control, when the soft dallyings of Cow- 
per had been written, the pen seemed determined to 
add a something from Bailey. And this is what it 
wanted to write : 

" Use, use is life, and he most truly lives 
Who uses best." 

Twenty years ago, for the first time in my life, did I 
copy Cowper's lines, and, more than this, attempted 
an essay on them. To-day, this moment, the paper is 
before me, yellow and dim, from its long hiding in a 
dark corner of my desk. Twenty years ago were the 
days of Raphael. I cannot, to-day, I find, copy for 
my publisher the yellow manuscript. It may not, then, 
be esteemed strange if, just here, a thought intrudes 
concerning the propriety of what, in these odd hours, 
shall now be written. What may be thought of these 
pages when another twenty years are passed? Shall 
the judgment of sixty differ from that of forty, as has 
forty from that of twenty ? Well, I say to myself, and 
1 believe, this will be so ; yet, at sixty, I doubt me if 
they would get rewritten. 



SPENDING. ig 

But my text answers not the requirements of the 
thoughts ; I will get a better from Shakspeare : 

" One man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, 
Mewhng and puking in the nurse's arms ; 
And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel, 
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail 
Unwillingly to school ; and then the lover, 
Sighing like a furnace, with a woful ballad 
Made to his mistress" eyebrow ; then a soldier, 
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard, 
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, 
Seeking the bubble reputation 

Even in the cannon's mouth ; and then, the justice, 
In fair, round belly, with good capon lined, 
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut. 
Full of wise saws and modern instances. 
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts 
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon ; 
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side ; 
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide 
For his shrunk shank ; and his big, manly voice, 
Turning again toward a childish treble, pipes 
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, 
That ends this strange, eventful history. 
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion ; 
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 

Shakspeare, says an eminent barrister and critic, is, 
in his truths, like the inspirations of the Bible, "the 
study of them enlarges and widens the meaning." We 
refute this, however, in this particular instance at least, 
I think, in asking if the poet himself is sans anything 
of the true life, even after two hundred years of burial. 

It is, then, of true life I would write, and the Avon 
poet, who I may not admit in his description to com- 



20 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

pass life, does yet very well remind me of what I would 
say. 

The two things most alike in this world are living and 
shopping. A man has to spend of life as he has of 
gold, — just so much. As he parts with this capital 
wisely or unwisely, so he gets in return good or evil. 
If, having but a single dollar, I enter a shop, and in 
the purchase of any one thing — a handkerchief, if you 
please — I lay it all out, when supper-time comes round 
I must go hungry. If in riotous living I spend my 
thousands, I may some time lack the shelter which 
pennies of the thousands might have provided. A man 
cannot have the "penny and the whistle." 

The capital of human life is, no doubt, for a wise 
purpose, a limited one. To invest it seems to be the 
problem most deserving attention. This capital is in 
the hands of a man without restrictions ; where he in- 
vests it, and how, is his own concern. Quickly, how- 
ever, is he to learn that investments mean permanency, 
and that to change these at will, is about the most 
diflicult of difficult things. 

To shop wisely with the money of life, is to consider 
well, for what one spends it, as a man buys, he keeps; 
never, indeed, can a purchase be fully gotten clear of, or 
exchanged ; this, every buyer will surely find out. 

A young man with his capital fresh in the pouch of 
his nature starts out to the shop. Here is plenty to 
attract him, no lack of objects to invite his outlay. 
Yet, even if he have but a very common share of judg- 
ment, he recognizes that there is choice to be made ; 
his money may not possess him of all that he sees, — 
what shall he buy? How shall he know what to buy? 



SPENDING. 21 

Twenty years ago I translated from the German of 
Jean Paul Richter the following story. Let the yomig 
man with his money in his pouch read it : 

''On a New- Year's night stood an old man at his 
window and looked, with a glance of fearful despair, up 
to the unmovable, ever-blooming heaven, and down 
upon the still, pure, white earth, whereupon now was 
no one so joyless and sleepless as he ; for near him stood 
his grave, and it was covered with the snow of age, not 
with the green foliage of youth. From a whole rich 
life had he brought nothing but errors, sins, and bitter 
memories, a wasted body and a desolate soul, a breast 
full of poison, and an old age full of repentance. To- 
day the beautiful days of his youth reappeared like spec- 
ters, and reconveyed him to that lovely morning when 
his father had placed him upon the crossway of life, 
which leads, on the right, over a sunny pathway into a 
large, quiet land full of light and harvests, and which, 
on the left, plunges into the mole-walks of vice, into a 
black cave full of distilling poison, full of hissing snakes, 
and of dark, sultry vapors. 

''Alas! the snakes were hanging on his breast, and 
the drops of poison were upon his tongue, and he knew 
now where he was. Distracted, and with unspeakable 
grief, he thus appealed to Heaven : Give me back my 
youth, O Father ! place me again upon the crossway, 
that I may choose otherwise. But his father and his 
youth were gone long ago. He saw ignes-fatui dancing 
upon the marshes and disappearing in the cemetery, and 
he said. These are my foolish days. He saw a star fly 
from heaven, and, glittering in its fall, it vanished upon 
the earth. That am I, said his bleeding heart, and the 



22 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

snake-teeth of repentance digged deeper and deeper 
into his wounds. His flaming imagination showed him 
flying night-walkers upon the roofs, and the wind-mill 
lifted threateningly its arms for his destruction, and a 
skull, having been left behind in the house of the dead, 
assumed gradually his features. In the midst of this 
struggle the music for the New Year flowed down from 
the steeple like far-off church melodies. His emotions 
began to soften. He looked about around the horizon, 
and over the far-extending earth, and he thought of the 
friends of his youth, who, now happier and better than 
he, were teachers of the earth, fathers of happy children 
and blessed men, and he said, Oh, I might also, like 
you, slumber with dry eyes through this first night if I 
had willed it ; alas ! I might have been happy, my dear 
parents, if I had but obeyed your exhortations. 

^'In the feverish remembrance of this time of his 
youth, it appeared to him as if the skull in the house 
of the dead raised itself up. At length it became a 
living youth, by that superstition which, in the New 
Year's night, sees spirits of futurity. 

"He could look upon it no longer, he covered his 
eyes, a thousand hot tears dropped from his cheeks, 
vanishing in the snow. He sighed disconsolately, in 
accents scarcely audible, ' Come back, youth, oh, 
come back !' And it did come back ; for thus horribly 
he had only dreamt. His errors alone had been no 
dream. But he thanked God that he, yet young, was 
able to turn round in the dirty walks of vice, and to 
return to the sunny path which leads into the land of 
the harvests." 

The implication of punishment for life-laws broken, 



SPENDING. 23 

to be meted out in some future sphere, may be left for 
the pulpit. The future which our suggestions consider, 
is to-day, to-morrow, every day. Eternity, for the man 
who would live right, has no beginning, no ending, — 
to-day is of eternity. Assuredly is this true of all ques- 
tions which involve good or evil. Who that has not 
bought a dollar's worth of heaven, as he has dropped 
his money upon the counter of a widow's wants, or 
who that has not received his complement of wretch- 
edness from the dollars drawn to his own till, leaving 
empty the purse of an orphan ? 

" Once in my youth," says Montaigne, ''I bent me 
down over the delicate freshness and fragrance of a 
sweet mignonette plant ; it was beautiful, and the breath 
of God came from its throat. This was in the morning. 
In the afternoon I had sinned to the deserving of hang- 
ing; and when, in the evening, I came back to get 
consolation from my flower, alas ! its fragrance was all 
gone and its freshness had turned into dry leaves." 

A man who buys of evil, is no less a fool — ay, even 
is he a greater — than he who casts his notes upon the 
waters, watching them as they float away. The last 
loses alone of good ; the first loses not only his good, 
but replaces the good with evil, — 

"Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 

'^The mewling, puking age of infancy" we know. 
The scene ^'that ends the strange, eventful history, — 
the second childishness," we daily see. So, also, do we 
see the actor, ere he speaks, walk from the obscurity of 
parts beyond the wings ; but before he passes out the 
other side he has played a part, and that which he has 



24 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

said or done is to leave its impress, stronger or lighter, 
greater or lesser, forever, — as a word, however lightly 
whisjDered, agitates the surrounding atmosphere and has 
the movement limited by space alone. 

" Use, use is life," 

and life is immortal. 

When one walks upon a street, he finds himself in- 
stinctively measuring the character and nature of the 
people he meets. This is truly an instinct, and comes 
from its relation to that law of nature which is known 
as impressibility; that is, that molecular life is influ- 
enced or modified by that which acts uj^on it. So that, 
as a man can make no movement, however slight, which 
alters not to an extent his muscular relations, so is no 
thought indulged, or act committed, which leaves not, 
in its own way, a lasting impression. So true indeed is 
this, physiologically, that it interprets to him who 
may read it, the character and nature of that book of 
life wherein is recorded all the actions of our being. 
Let us make an illustration: "That is a bad man," 
say you, as one crosses your way; or, " In that face is 
the countenance of virtue." Why do you so judge? 
It is not probable that you may have any special reason 
to give, but you do not hesitate to affirm that you are 
seldom mistaken in these judgments. Well, ask now 
your friend, the closer observing physiognomist, about 
the two passers, or ask your neighbor, the phrenologist, 
as he calls himself. Little by little will these, with 
their cultivated powers, spell out the impressions which, 
like letters strung together, make the books of the two 
lives. Page by page will they read, missing nothing, 



SPENDING. 



25 



and at length shall you know, from the beginniug to 
the ending, all of the lines that have been written. It 
is no truer that muscles, bones, and ligaments a/e in- 
fluenced to their strength or weakness by that which is 
put into the blood for their nutrition, than is it, that 
the soul of a man shows the pabulum upon which it 
feeds. The story of a life, body and soul, is the story 
of an animal fed upon pigment. For experiment's sake 
take a young pig, fresh from its mother, and ot rapid 
growth, feed it alternate days with food conuining 
madder and food without the coloring mattei ; in a 
month the animal may be killed, when dissection will 
reveal in its bones layers of red and layers of white, as 
regular in the rotation, as was the feeding. 

Or, to take another example, also a very familiar 
one : prick into the skin in earliest boyhood India-ink. 
It remains, some of it, even although happily modified, 
when old age has come to the man. Yet, in the years 
which have intervened, the epithelial tissue in which it 
lies has been in constant alteration. True, the ink 
must disappear, all of it, some time, — not from life 
however, not from nature. So long as matter shall last 
will it exist. I only want to impress that in your re- 
lation with it you modified it and it modified you. 

If the shop in which one buys, contains bonds which 
pay a continuously increasing interest, shall a purchasei 
not better take of these, than of stocks which are worth- 
less, or of chattels, which may be absolutely hurtful? 

A good action radiates good, and an evil deed circu- 
lates evil ; shall one, then, not rather do that which is 
good? 

A man is a free agent to himself. Shall he, then. 



26 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

as his turn comes, play the seven ages, taking no lesson 
from the past? Will he say, A bearded pard is the 
fourth part, and I must play the pard ? Now war is 
coming to be recognized as the disgrace and offense of 
high civilization, and woe may it be to him by whom 
the offense cometh ! Shall he not then rather beat his 
sword into the pruning-hook, and in the higher and 
nobler pursuits of peace, give to himself, and insure to 
others, that quiet and calm which is the joy and the 
comfort of living ? Sophistry may only satisfy the sol- 
dier of defense — never him, of offense. 

If use is life, to do good and to' get good is the life 
of use. Not is life to be viewed as seven seasons, but 
as three : spring, the season of preparation ; summer, 
the season of development ; fall, the season of giving 
forth. To yield, is the highest development of man- 
life, as it is of tree-life ; and as a tree is known by its 
fruit, so becomes a man known. The tree that pro- 
duces the best fruit is most valued, best attended. So 
man, producing good fruit, is cultivated, and men bring 
to his support all that best ministers to him ; and if he 
grows greater and better than all other trees, so it is to 
his honor and glory to stand out a landmark to the 
world. 

But a tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn 
down, and is cast into the fire. The moral axe which 
strikes down a bad man is not of less temper of edge 
than is that which cleaves through a bad tree. It 
differs, however, from it in being a blade which rises out 
of a man's own self, and its strikings are of each action ; 
so that as a man of ill grace strikes, happily his axe 
strikes also, and thus, with each blow he makes, his 



SPENDING, 



27 



ability to strike hard is diminished. The world, seeing 
not the axe which cuts him, looks at him as a man 
losing character, and says of him, ^' He will soon 
be powerless for evil, for all his reputation will be 
gone," 



PRINCIPLES. 

^^ A N ordinary man," says Godwin, in his ''Study 

Jr\. of the Classics," "sees an object just as it is 
presented to him, and sees no more. But a man of 
genius takes it to pieces, inquires into its causes and 
effects, remarks its internal structure, and considers 
what would have been the result if its members had 
been arranged and combined differently, or had been 
subjected to other influences. The man of genius gains 
a whole magazine of thought, while the ordinary man 
has received only one idea ; and his powers are multi- 
plied in proportion to the number of ideas upon which 
they are to be so employed." 

In the museum of the University of Pennsylvania 
hangs the portrait of an eminent man, in which he is 
represented as leaning against a massive block of 
granite ; across the face of this block, three times 
repeated, is the meaning word. Principles, Principles, 
Principles. 

As it comes in the way of a man to grow in the com- 
prehension of the things of life, he will find that more 
and more is it impressed on him, that nothing, but that 
which ignorance makes, is complex ; that anything and 
everything, understood, astonishes much more in its 
simplicity than it did in the dim light of its obscurity. 

The law of the needle, said Howe, is, I see, that 
the eye should be in the point, and not in the head, 
(28) 



PRINCIPLES. 29 

and so, the moment the eye was changed, the needle 
made twenty stitches where before it had only been able 
to make one ; and mankind wondered, and each day 
wonders not less, that the stupidity of the world, never, 
until the nineteenth century of the Christian era, saw 
the principle of managing a needle. 

Principles are, however, to be grasped alone from 
that preliminary comprehension of things which con- 
siders details ; a man crawls with his finite mental feet 
from the spring's mouth to the spring's source ; from 
the phenomena to the force from which phenomena 
come. It is thus, or otherwise, that there is a genius 
not of growth, but of birth; or perhaps it very well 
may be that there are even two such sources of true 
knowledge, that is, the inductive, and the inspirational. 

To induce^ a man must possess that through which 
induction comes ; this possession is knowledge : recall 
the aphorism of all civilization, " Knowledge is power." 

Let us for a moment think of the science of language. 
What must have been the crude condition of that which 
to-day, from twenty-six irregular marks, composes many 
thousands of words, which words, in the various trans- 
positions which we can make of them, express all the 
science, the art, the poetry, and the literature of the 
world ! Or think again of all the music of the world, 
of the grave, godly strains of Beethoven, or of the 
pipings, which dance of themselves, of Offenbach, — 
the changes of seven notes, — simply, seven notes. Or 
still again, think of the great mechanical works accom- 
plished by man. The stones of the Pyramids raised ; 
seas turned from their channels ; mountains razed ; 
steam harnessed to Avheels, and working as docile 



30 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



as the veriest galley-slave, — all, all done with five 
simple instruments. Or still again, count the stars of 
the sky and number the grains of sand upon the sea- 
shore, — it is easy to find the number. You need but nine 
figures and a cipher. Yes, wonderful, and of witchery, 
as it seemed to the unlettered dweller of the forest, it 
is even, as remarked by Cardell, '' That the instrument 
of all intellectual improvement, of social enjoyment, 
of commercial transactions ; the great mental attendant 
from which the dearest ties of domestic life derive 
their highest gratification ; the handmaid of science 
in all its walks ; the medium of instruction, civil, moral, 
religious ; the basis of all the relations of peace and 
war; of public security and personal right; of jurispru- 
dence, and the decisions of life and death ; the whole 
composition of individual elevation and national glory 
so inwrought with every ligament of social existence, — 
all this amazing machinery depends on the combina- 
tions of twenty-six little marks of different forms made 
on paper, and called letters." 

But how, and whence came letters? Letters came 
as all things come, that is, being a creation of neces- 
sity. Let me off'er an illustration. 

Some few years back there lived, in the city of Phil- 
adelphia, a strange man, who wandered about the streets 
hatless, and whom the people called Munday or Mon- 
day, otherwise the '' Hatless Philosopher." One after- 
noon, followed by a troop of boys, his usual attendants, 
I saw this man stop, in an apparently reflective mood, 
before a store sign upon which was inscribed the name 
"Caveson," Turning, after a moment, to his fol- 
lowers, he said, "Boys, can any of you tell me how 



rRINCIPLES. 



31 



this man came to be called Caveson ? It is just from 
the matter of a principle. The father of this person 
lived, in some long-ago-forgotten time, in a cave. 
What so natural as to distinguish him from his neigh- 
bor who lived in the wood, by designating him from 
his residence? Thus he became 'Cave,' the man 
who lived in the cave. In the course of time, this 
man in the shop here was born ; he had to have a 
name, so it came, by the same principle, that people 
knew him as Cave's son. The apostrophe, as you 
must see, soon made itself felt as awkward and un- 
necessary; it was dropped, and from that hour the 
man was Caveson." Just here an inductive urchin, 
of Jewish type, cried out, ''But how about Caveson's 
son, — what did they call him?" " Go to your school, 
instead of lounging about the streets," answered the 
Philosopher, "and you will discover that by this time 
your Hebrew fathers had learned grammar, and having 
'case,' they never could, thereafter, have had any 
trouble about such matters." 

Just as Cave's son became Caveson, so letters came, 
must have come. With man's advancement, require- 
ments grew, or rather, made themselves felt ; in- 
genuity developed with requirements. 

Let us for a moment pursue this subject. It very 
well serves as a type of all inductive knowledge ; in it 
may be seen all of advancing life. 

The hieroglyphics of Egypt, which were the letters 
of the Egyptian, numbered two hundred and three. 
Perhaps, better than call them letters, we should desig- 
nate them as signs. They were the crude creations of 
the predecessors of Phoenicia's Cadmus ; they were 



32 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



better than no signs, but, as higher requirements 
proved, they had not in them the capability of passing 
beyond symbols. Hence we wonder not now that the 
Egyptian transmitted to his succeeding ages no poetry 
or literature, it was simply that he had no alphabet in 
which to write such things ; his signs were paintings, 
and who has ever painted the words that burn ? He 
could tell, and has told, of his wars, and of his arts, 
of sciences, policy, and laws, but in higher composi- 
tion he was dumb. 

The fault of the letter, or sign, or symbol of Egypt, 
call it what you please, was the lack of a mathematical 
precision. To write much, was to increase the number 
of the hieroglyphics ; to increase the number, was to 
confound the meanings. Now, it is with letters as with 
machinery : to do much work with them, the elements 
of their construction must be simple, easy of under- 
standing, and effectual in application. The letters of 
Cadmus, if indeed it were he who invented the letters 
we now use, are reducible to a mathematical certainty 
in the matter of unlimited application ; simple lines 
and marks that they are, made, all of them, in a 
moment, they will write as readily the history and 
poetry of a world as the simple explanation of their 
own invention. And thus we are led to see that 
this wonderful thing called language, which even the 
library of an Alexandria, with its half-million volumes, 
did not exhaust, lies, all of it, in twenty-six little 
marks. Ah ! what shall man not know, when he be- 
comes able to see in all things, as did Cadmus, of the 
secrets of language ? The houses of the mysteries are 
as soap-bubbles, when we may reach to pierce them. 



PRINCIPLES. 33 

To be able to do, is but to know ; to know, is, by 
contemplation and investigation, to possess one's self 
of that knowledge which, as Bacon calls it, is the 
*' force, or power, of life." But, ''Even as a hawke 
fleeth not hie with one wing, even so a man reacheth 
not to excellency with one idea" — tongue, is the word 
of the philosophic Askam, from whom I make the 
quotation. 

This I want to say, that no thing is known, solidly, 
outside of the reasons concerned in the construction 
of that thing. What an unintelligible mass of confu- 
sion must ever remain pathological matters to him who 
possesses not the weights of the physiological balance ! 
With what may he measure derangements? With 
what illumine the obscurities? And then again, in 
turn, who can learn anything of physiology without a 
foundation for judgment fixed in the laws of anatomi- 
cal construction? And what man, still again, may 
read the general law of form, who, with microscope, 
grasps not first the secrets of histology ? How incom- 
prehensible, to the illiterate mind, must it be, when, 
from a marl-pit, the palaeontologist picks up the half- 
decayed tooth, and from its anatomy reads the history 
of a race dead a thousand years ! Nay ; even more 
than this ; when, from that single symbol, he re-creates, 
with wood and plaster, the exact form of the entire 
animal, never perhaps, seen by human eyes. Yet, to 
the scholar, the work has been very easy ; to do it, 
he needed alone to know the principle of type con- 
formity. 

Life is conformity to law. This I believe to be the 
highest text in medicine. The phenomena of the earth 

3 



34 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



and of the heavens are simply expressions, true to their 
laws as are the revolutions of the wheel. Nothing in 
all the world's creation is complex. What should be to 
man the obscurities of medical diagnosis, when it is 
permitted him to look to the very limits of sidereal 
space? When a physician sees not fully and distinctly 
the disease of his patient, he is ignorant, must be igno- 
rant, because he fails to read causes that exist, and 
which causes, in the very law of nature, are readable. 
Not, however, as all must understand, may such igno- 
rance reflect ■ specially on any individual practitioner; 
all his fellows may be equally unable to the translation. 
But this reflection it does make : every phenomenon 
has its cause, every cause is capable of analysis. Learn- 
ing is not complete in a man until he has the key that 
opens every secret. Does this expression seem preten- 
tious? Not so. Adam and Eve got learning enough 
to discover that they were naked. The nineteenth 
century clutches by the very blade the flaming sword 
that drove them from Paradise, and turns it into a mes- 
sage-bearer to run up and down the earth. Or, if the 
sword rebels and would strike, man fends the blow with 
his lightning-rod. 

"It moves," said Galileo; with his newly-invented 
telescope he had caught the secrets of the heavens, and 
had overturned the unintelligible unrealities of the 
Ptolemaic theory. It is very simple to us noAV that we 
know it. The law of the balloon is now no mystery 
even to a child ; but Bartholomeu Gusmao had to en- 
dure the tortures of Dominic's Inquisition because his 
invention was deemed by his ignorant Jesuit brothers 
to be of Satan rather than of science. 



PRINCIPLES. 



35 



The fault of the age is, that man knows entirely too 
little, or entirely too much, — too much for the Ptole- 
maic faith of the monkish fathers, too little for the 
materialistic * flight which, it may be, is to unite him on 
a higher plane with the religion which, as a scientist, 
he is now accused of wandering from. God has multi- 
tudinous attributes. The sum of his total, or the secrets 
of his analysis, man is never perhaps to read. But this 
is the only knowledge he may not attain to. To him, 
I am sure, are all other mysteries given, — he may not, by 
searching, find out God, yet he may learn of Him. But 
milk is for babes, and strong meat is for men. Let 
babes take that which best suits them, but when men 
revile the meat which may alone appease the appetite 
of a Herbert Spencer, aTyndall, a Darwin, an Emerson, 
or any other thinker, let them remember the contempt 
which all the casuistry of Tiraboschi succeeded not in 
turning from the milk-drinkers of the Inquisition, the 
persecutors of Galileo and Gusmao. 

The study of the laws of life is materialism, but mate- 
rialism is not infidelity. It is time, if, indeed, the time 
has not already come, when intelligence shall have out- 
grown this, its greatest heresy to itself. ''Know thy- 
self," is the advice of God, and no man knows of 
himself without knowing just that much more of God. 

The study of self, of life, is materialism. ''My in- 
vention," said Gusmao, "is not of Satan, is not in 
opposition to any law or belief of the church, the 
navigation of the air is the simple understanding of a 



••■ Materialism is not accepted in these papers as denying spiritual 
relations. 



^6 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

natural law." Not so, however, thought his fellow- 
Jesuits, and so Gusmao was thrown into the deepest 
dungeon of the Inquisition for being heretical and in 
league with evil spirits. Can this Florentine professor, 
in his Copernican heresy, know more than Pope, coun- 
cils, and fathers? asks the antagonist essayist of the 
man who had discovered more of God than had all the 
ignorance of his times. ''It does move," answered 
Galileo ; and the church and the people of to-day re- 
peat, "It does move." "The Inquisition itself will 
float in my balloon," cried Gusmao from his deep cell, 
and Catholic France has floated. Materialism, — why, 
materialism is (to the understanding of God) what the 
understanding of anatomy is to the comprehension of 
physiology, or what physiology is to the knowledge of 
pathology. Materialism never has, never will, never 
can be in opposition to religion. To theology, it has 
been and may still be ; but a great mistake is made 
when theology and religion are used as synonymous. 

I would, just here, be well understood and not mis- 
quoted. My own soul bows in reverence, beyond any 
words I might speak, before my God, the Creator of 
the world. But the subject of religion appeals to me 
with a grandeur and a greatness, and withal, with a 
simplicity which raises it so high, that the dross which 
man throws over it, somehow or other, fails to obscure 
it to me. Where duty is so plain, the technicalities of 
science do not seem to me necessary to its elucidation. 
If (between materialism and theology) there is confu- 
sion and conflict, it is only the difl'erence of two things 
which, from opposite aspects, gravitate towards a com- 
mon center. When the two classes map their circle. 



PRINCIPLES. 



37 



each will, from necessity, clasp hands at this center ; 
this cannot be otherwise, else is truth not truth, or else 
are men dishonest to that which is the very pith of life, 
and are fools in their very constitutions. 

The difference between the scientist and theologians 
is the difference of Philip's son and " the Babylonian 
priests. When Alexander overran Babylon, he brought 
from every country which he had conquered one of its 
priesthood. Assembling them all together he asked, 
'*Do you venerate a highest invisible being?" All 
bowed themselves and answered, " We do." 

'' With what title name you him?" asked the king. 
Thereupon answered the priest from India, '' We name 
it Brahma; that means the great." The priest from 
Persia, "We name it Ormus; that means the original 
light." The priest from Judea, ''Jehovah Adonai ; the 
Lord who was, is, and will be." And thus every priest 
had an own word wherewith he denominated the Most 
High. Then in his heart angered the king. "You 
have only one ruler and one king," said he, "so 
shall you henceforth have only one god ; Zeus is his 
name. ' ' 

When the king had spoken there was much sorrow, 
for the priests said to themselves, " How can we love 
a new god ?' ' 

At length a Brahmin, a gray-haired sage, begged per- 
mission of the king to speak to the assembly. Turning 
himself to the priests he thus addressed them: "The 
heavenly constellation of the day, the well of the earthly 
light, shines it in the country of each of you?" All 
bowed themselves together and answered, "Yes." 
Then the Brahmin asked them one after another, " How 



38 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

name you the same?" Each one answered, but each 
had a different name. Then turned the Brahmin to 
the king and asked, "Shall they not name henceforth 
the constellation of the day with the same word ?' ' At 
these words the king became full of shame, and said, 
" Let them each use his own word ; I see well that the 
image and sign is not the essence." {Krummacher.') 

We come back. A principle is like the delicate 
lever, which a slight hand touches, and a huge steam- 
ship is moved. But the lever mover must understand 
the relations of the lever. This is knowledge in detail ; 
a wise student seeks always from the details, the prin- 
ciple, thus he gets hold of the lever. ''Give me a 
fulcrum," cried Archimedes, ''and I will move the 
world." 

Let us work out together a thought, a study we may 
call it. Let us see how a circle, little or great, has 
always a center. This shall be the thought. 

God is omnipresent. Yet when a man supplicates 
God there is a light of his nature which always places 
before him a father with an individuality, whom he ad- 
dresses. Can anything have individuality and yet be 
omnipresent? Is this the same as asking "If a thing 
can be in two different places at the same time ?" We 
will consider the answer materialistically. 

I speak before you a word, Water. Already has the 
mind in its presence that which is known as this sub- 
stance. Every one of us has the same sense of recog- 
nition. No two differ in what is seen. This, then, 
which we see, which we recognize, is a thing with an 
individuality. So much is certain. Water has indi- 
viduality. 



PRINCIPLES. 



39 



We pass to a second proposition. Water is omni- 
present. 

Take a vessel and fill it with ice, set it out on the 
hottest, driest day of summer ; soon its whole surface 
is covered with beads of water ; the cold vessel has 
simply condensed surrounding moisture. Or get up 
early some summer morning, and see the dew with 
which the earth washes her face ; the spigot of radia- 
tion is not less simple than is that which man turns in 
his bath. The air, then, is full of water, and the finger 
may make no motion in space that does not displace 
this substance. Burn a piece of wood, dry, if you 
please, with the lapse of ages ; analyze the smoke which 
ascends in the combustion, and in every pore of the 
wood you will see that there must have been moisture. 
Take the carpet upon your floor ; if you find not water 
in its fibres it is rotten, and you will need to throw it 
away. Take a bone, the identical one, if you might 
find it, which gave origin to the expression, ^' Dry as a 
bone," subject it to the action of a fire which shall burn 
out even but part of the animal moisture it contains, 
and you will have no longer a bone, but dust. Take 
the paper upon which you write ; take your books ; in 
all, will be found water. Take man in his lordliness. 
Water is he, all of him, but an almost inappreciable 
moiety. 

Water is everywhere at the same time. 

Water is, then, omnipresent.* 

If thus, materialistically, we demonstrate the omni- 
presence of a created thing, is it not a negative proof 

* Criticism may be anticipated by admitting that water is not recog- 
nizable by analysis in even all the things which have been mentioned ; 



40 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



quite as strong as a positive, that the Creator is more 
subtle than that which he creates ? We assume, then, 
logically, the proving without a doubt that could arise 
on the question. Let us also repeat the other aspect, 
for it is a comfortable expression to mankind, God, 
with his omnipresence, is Individual. 

We pause here to consider the knowledge which en- 
ables us to know, inductively, what we have just averred. 

If we say water is in everything, and as we know 
everything passes away, either it must be that water is 
a continuous creation, or otherwise it must be directly 
correlative. 

Let us look. 

Here is a spring, away, if we please, upon a mount- 
ain-side. We stand for awhile and watch the water as 
it come-s bubbling through the sands in the bottom. 
We will dig, we say, for we wish to find the source of 
the bubbling ; so, as we work, we come soon to a 
crevice ; here is the water ; foot by foot we follow this 
crevice ; it leads us to the surface. A spring, then, is 
simply water coming up through the earth, which water 
had soaked in from its surface. This our digging has 
proved to us. 

We will follow the water from the spring ; it is a 
mountain rivulet : the grass, and ferns, and birds drink 
of it. We follow it to the meadow : it has grown into 



it is not found in oxide of iron, in crystals, etc. It may be denied 
that as water it exists in the brain ; but not to digress to a discussion 
which passes beyond the demonstrations of analytical chemistry, water 
is a substance so widely diffused that one may scarcely conceive where 
it may not be, and, as such a substance, it answers best the purpose 
of our illustration. 



PRINCIPLES. 41 

the creek ; it becomes of the river ; of the bay ; of the 
sea. Now we seat ourselves upon the shore. What 
are the great rays extending away off into the sky ? — 
water-rays, the shore-man calls them. Let us follow. 
Behold ! it is the water of the mountain spring. We 
go not far before we see the vapors condensed into a 
cloud, and the cloud is carried by the swaying winds 
over the mountain ; here it meets with some colder 
strata, and down comes the water in the form of rain. 
We run to look at it, but even so soon has it sunk away 
into the crevice. Then we say to ourselves we have 
seen a circle. 

Have we worked out our thought ? And may not 
even this single illustration suggest that profoundest 
things are capable of ample and simple explanation? 
— that even of God may we learn something by the 
seeking. 

I object to the common criticism on the word ma- 
terialism, because it seems to me that they who criti- 
cise fail to see that its definition is of a necessity changed 
by the circumstances of the times. Matter and spirit 
correlate, and in their transmigration fulfill all laws and 
serve all purposes ; but materialism treats alone of law, 
not of the maker of the law. Materialism (in the ana- 
lytical nature) precedes faith, as symbols and signs 
precede speech. Materialism is the one side of a circle 
that leads to God, — the maker of Law, just as Bible- 
faith is the other side. The first teaches a man the 
attributes of his God by carrying him over God's foot- 
steps ; the second is the same knowledge, received by 
what we have suggested as inspirational. 

From a common source has come all things. One 



42 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



circlet is associated with another, as are the circlets en- 
larging from the stone which agitates the water. A 
man getting his leaching from inspiration is as one 
raised above the water and seeing the circlets as they 
enlarge from a center. The materialist seeks the cen- 
ter, being led from the circumference. Let not central- 
ist and materialist rebuke each other, but rather recog- 
nize that to each pertains the same center and the same 
circle. 

"Children only, and not men," says the sacred 
book of the Hindoo, 'Svrite and speak of the specu- 
lative and practical faculties as two ; they are but one, 
for both obtain the self-same end, and the place which 
is gained by the followers of the one is gained by the 
followers of the other." 



LAW. 

LAW it is which governs, or should govern, all 
things. Absence of law, or absence of con- 
formity to law, gives much more of dis-ease, than ease. 
Let no man complain in his short-sightedness that he is 
under the dominion of law, even although its clutch 
may be about his throat, or its incubus upon his estate : 
let him rather look farther. 

Here before us stands, if we may make an example, 
a poor little girl ; she shivers in the thinness of her 
blood ; she is putrescent from its pollution. She suf- 
fers from the infringement of law ; yet in her person 
has she not broken the law wherefrom she suffers. She 
is laboring, we say, under a transmitted disease ; the 
sin of the father is visited on the child, and to the 
fourth generation is this perhaps to continue. 

In reflecting on a case of this kind, we are led, natu- 
rally, to consider the subject of the waste and repair 
constantly at variance in the human economy, — the 
laws of nutrition, if you please ; and in such reflection 
we find forced upon us the conviction of the agreement 
with modern science ; of the inferences or prophecies, 
the deductions or inspired sayings, name them what 
you will, of those whom we infer to have known no- 
thing logically of what they affirmed. To say, in an 
isolated or abstract manner, that one shall suffer for the 
sins of another, seems, and indeed is, repugnant to all 

(43) 



44 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

sense of equity; but when wider viewed, when one 
rises above the mists which environ him in his in- 
dividuality, when he comes to a recognition of the 
principles which govern, if, then, he does not cease to 
think of equity, he finds himself at least lost in won- 
derment of a law through whose provision he has been 
so well and so fully cared for. 

Life and fate may be likened to the revolving wheels 
of a great chariot, yet luckily for us, guided in an 
unerring, undeviating course, as when a Phoebus holds 
the reins, not roving and erratically moving as with a 
Phaeton, to set a world ablaze. 

The type of life is a unity. Vary as it must, change 
as it will, it passes onward step by step, stage by stage, 
in an eternal progress — or shall we better say, in an 
eternal circle? — until the single cell becomes a man, 
and until — who may say otherwise? — the man grows unto 
his God, to become again a part of that from whence 
he came, — as God is life. As a sunray set free from its 
center, passes through immensity, doing in its passage, 
who shall say what good ? becomes imprisoned in a clod 
of coal, passes again after generations of generations to 
its chemical elimination, which we call fire, is again 
freed, again on its round, and finally, after a varied 
service, finds itself whence it came. 

Or, as water has a distinct individuality, let it be for 
us in what form it may, one it is, like unto God : the 
same, everlasting and eternal ; it changes form but 
alters not ; it passes along in its cycle, now the rolling 
waves of an ocean, now the solid and ponderous ice- 
berg, anon as the insensible perspiration ; with the 
same sparkle it refreshes the lips of a dying infant 



LA IK 



45 



and lashes to his destruction the storm-tossed mariner ; 
it obeys the laws of its existence, and in so obeying can 
heed as little the calls of him who would woo its rain- 
drops to his parched fields as him who prays the stay 
of a deluge. 

What is this law of force which in the abstract seems 
so merciless? It is the law of the sunshine, which 
gives life alike to the fields of the just and the unjust ; 
the law of the water, which, while it floats to the de- 
struction of some peaceful town the iron-clad monster 
of war, carries, as well, the love-freighted argosy to 
the relief of a Leyden. It is the law of nature, firm, 
unchanging, immutable as creation itself, for it is crea- 
tion. 

Let us look still farther. 

Life is a formative process ; a process of develop- 
ment, growth, maintenance. The principle is alike in all 
beings. Indeed, I take it that it is alike in everything, 
in a stone as in a man, and I am compelled to see that 
it is perfect. Will you answer that the individual runs 
out and dies? It may simply be told you to look 
wider ; life dies not. What man calls death is only 
change of form ; is only the correlation of one thing 
into another thing. Nothing is lost. No more than is 
lost the sunray which changed and correlated from a 
bright essence into the black, silent coal crystal, or the 
water, which perhaps that very sunray may have evap- 
orated and carried away from sight. 

Some time during the earlier weeks of the last sum- 
mer there came to my office a beautiful woman, with 
bitter complaints of an ugly hair-mole that had fixed 
itself upon her cheek. I cut this (to her, disgusting 



46 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

thing) from its location, and, macerating it into a 
liquid manure, little by little made a lily, which was 
growing in my garden, appropriate the tumor; in a 
month, a short month, nature had converted the de- 
formity into a fragrant nosegay, and that which was 
so offensive became a source of delight. It was simply 
a matter of correlation. 

The full knowledge and the observance of law would 
necessarily give man the all-sufhcient command of his 
molecules, would yield him all protection, would in- 
sure him all comfort. 

Let law be obeyed, and law is found man's minister ; 
let law be disobeyed, and law becomes man's execu- 
tioner. 

Born and reared, the physical life of man is a simple 
matter of chemico-vital assimilation, — nothing else ; by 
processes natural, the deficient is renewed, the lost is 
replaced. So long as the phenomena of waste and re- 
pair are in harmony ; so long, in other words, as the 
builder follows the wake of the scavenger, so long man 
exists in integrity and repair, — ^just, indeed, as houses 
exist. Derange nutrition, and at once degeneration, 
or rather, let us say, alteration, commences. Assim- 
ilation, it is true, may go on, but it is as the new wine 
put into the old bottle ; it is the strong, not taking the 
place of, but attached to, the weak : all will fall to- 
gether. Derangement of nutrition is derangement of 
law. Alas ! that we are yet so ignorant that there are 
many things about our house, which, seeing them 
weaken, we know not how to strengthen. About the 
brick and the mortar, the frame and the rafters, we are 
not unlearned ; but within are many complexities, 



LA W. 



47 



many chinks and crannies, full in themselves of second- 
ary chinks and crannies, and these so small, so deep, 
so recessed, that it happens every day that the destroyer 
settles himself in some place so obscure, that while 
he kills, he laughs at defiance. You or I meet with 
an accident in our watch, break a crystal, or a hand, 
or the case becomes damaged, but straightway we 
find ourselves wise enough to appreciate the harm, 
and the ill is soon repaired. Perhaps, however, the 
watch has fallen, and we take it up, yet see nothing 
amiss, but from that hour, although it goes, it goes 
wrong. We are led to know that something is required ; 
we consult, then, the watchmaker. He may or may not 
see ; this would be according to his light. What the 
man with a magnifying lens would observe would not 
be discovered by one with the unassisted eye. What 
sufficient knowledge would quickly correct, would re- 
main unhelped by the inexperienced. If we were all 
that watchmakers like ourselves should be, and — may I 
not say ? — ^judging what we may come to learn, from what 
we have worked out — should be — can be ; a man could 
be made to keep time until he died from old age or 
annihilating accident. This I firmly and fully believe. 
Yet, if we cannot always save, we never lose. Happy 
world, and happy "life" of the world, that the unity 
cannot be destroyed, — that "form," mocking man's 
failures, will, let alone, or, indeed, however maltreated, 
take care of, and restore, itself! Offenses, whatever 
their character or nature, wear themselves out, or are 
overcome. In the physical world we have all the proof 
we need of such a law ; it may, for all that is known, 
apply as well to the spiritual. Will not this little girl 



48 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

we example, in the fourth generation be purified of 
this specific offense? or if it happen that the poison 
which courses through her blood is as the blood itself, 
and may not be overcome, will she not, from neces- 
sity, run with it, as did the swine into the sea, and 
will not thus the parasite be destroyed ? We all have 
seen, doubtless, some great oak, around which, year 
after year, the tightening garniture of an ivy-vine has 
fixed itself, and we have watched the tree until we 
have seen it die ; but a day came when it fell, and with 
its fall we saw slacken and die the grasp of the para- 
site. What then ? From the thing passed away, be it 
tree or man, mineral or metal, — from the element into 
which the thing has passed, comes forth new forms. 
What matters what the likeness? Does not the water 
fulfill alike its mission, whether we have it as the clouds, 
which modify the sun's heat ; as ice, which cools the 
fevered patient; or as a dancing rivulet, which, as it 
leaps and plashes down the mountain-side, delights the 
senses? What should it matter to a nugget of gold 
taken from the hillside whether it adorns the finger 
of beauty, or passes to the avaricious palm of a grasping 
creditor? Should a piece of iron think itself ill used 
because the workman moulded it into a rivet rather 
than incorporated it into the fly-wheel of a steam- 
engine ? I put it to you, if a rivet that holds well does 
not its proportion of good with the fly-wheels? All 
pieces of iron cannot be fly-wheels, and it certainly 
would be sad enough for our comfort if all the ore was 
made into rivets. 

Unity and individuality are not, however, synonyms. 
Man, not as a combination of elementary substances, 



LA IV. 



49 



but as man, as the father, the husband, the celebrity, 
must have, and craves, immortality. Yet, who thinks 
or cares for such individuality when he reads the his- 
tory of the genus? Man was smothered and buried at 
Pompeii ; but who knows, or even cares to know, his 
name? What, in the future, are the features of the 
man who blessed the world with the sewing-machine ? 
or what of him who put into harness the lightnings ? 
Tell me who lifted the stones of the Pyramids, or who 
carved the mercy-expressive eyes of the Sphinx ? Man. 
But what was his name ? 

About the dispensations, as they are called, the mys- 
teries, who may know ? That it is necessary, or even 
useful, that we should bother ourselves about them may 
be doubted. The man who lives well to-day must 
be fitting himself for a better living to-morrow. To 
me it seems that man attains his highest elevation, cer- 
tainly in his relations to his fellows and to himself, and 
it may be believed also to his God, when he works just 
as all the rest of nature works ; that is, fixes himself 
and holds on, doing his best. We know what we are ; 
but who knows what he will be ? Shall a violet grum- 
ble that it has not the strength of a pine? or the tree 
complain that it lacks the odor of the flower? We 
will not, as Physicists at least, go outside that we can 
attain to. If it please God that my direct Ego is to be 
forever and eternally retained without alteration, why, 
as I feel now and am informed, I think I should be 
very grateful. The other day I was sitting at table 
with a reflective friend, when the subject of two roasted 
ducks, then before us, came up. We were sympathizing 
for the dead birds, until suddenly it struck us that from 

4 



50 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

fowls they were to be correlated into human bipeds, 
into the higher life of humanity; and in this conviction 
we went at the ducks with a relish, — a relish tinctured 
alone with the regret that they could not know what a 
service we were doing them. 

Man may not discuss the attributes of the soul : he 
may only query. Yet seeing, as he must, so much of 
good, recognizing that all of which he fully knows is 
good, why, before any change, should he falter? Is 
the soul of a man, as it represents and is the Ego, his 
nearest relation to the perfect ? We know not other- 
wise, and we may not, perhaps, by searching, find out ; 
but this we may know, and do, — we may rest in law, 
which has never yet been discovered to be unjust, par- 
tial, or weak. 



CORRELATION. 

THE doctrine of the "Correlation and Conserva- 
tion of Force," which men strangely speak of 
as a something new, and which, unfortunately for an 
advancing acquaintance of the masses with their Crea- 
tor, through his wonderful works, many unreflecting or 
illiterate of our clergy continue to denounce as a de- 
lusive doctrine, is, and has been, necessarily, the law 
of life and progression from the beginning. 

I say illiterate clergy. This term, to the popular 
ear, sounds harsh. It sounds harsh to my own ; but 
the reflection of a single moment must show that the 
harshness is in our prejudices, not in the word. We 
rebel not when we hear the expression ''illiterate doc- 
tor." Indeed, while regretting the necessity for the 
use of such a term, it becomes us that we like to hear 
it, as it is to the credit of our intelligence that we 
recognize the something that sets itself as a bar be- 
tween what we know to be a grand science and him 
who lacks even the conception of what it is to repre- 
sent it. Men do not confound the terms illiterate 
doctor and medicine. 

" It is a humiliating, but instructive, fact," says the 
learned and most orthodox Dr. McCosh, "that many 
new discoveries in physical science have, in the first 

(50 



52 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



instance, been denounced as atheistic, because they 
were not conformable to the opinions which religious 
men had been led to entertain, not of God, but of the 
phenomena of the world. Even the illustrious Leib- 
nitz charged the system of Newton with having an 
irreligious tendency, and (as I once heard Humboldt 
denouncing, in an interview I had with him a few 
months before his death) sought to poison the mind 
of the famous Princess Sophie of Prussia against him. 
It is a curious circumstance that the law of gravitation 
had to be defended on the side of religion, at the be- 
ginning of last century, by Maclaurin, in his 'Account 
of the Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton.' In the last 
age, numbers, trained in a narrow theological geology 
(not found in Scripture but drawn out by wrong infer- 
ence), opposed the discoveries as to the successive 
strata and races of animated beings on the earth's sur- 
face, and could scarcely be reconciled to them when 
such men as Buckland and Chambers, Hitchcock and 
Hugh Miller, showed that these facts widened indefi- 
nitely the horizon of our vision, added a new prov- 
ince to the universe of God, by disclosing a past his- 
tory before unknown, and opened new and grander 
views of the prescience and preordination of God. 
And in our times there are persons who cannot take in 
these new doctrines of natural history and compara- 
tive language ; not because they run counter to any 
doctrine or precept of religion, but because they con- 
flict with certain historical or scientific preconceptions 
which have become bound up with their devout 
beliefs." 

It is related by Dr. Elam tliat when Sir Humphry 



CORRELATION. 53 

Davy was making his great researches into the consti- 
tution of the earths and alkalies, some of the chemical 
professors felt greatly aggrieved at having their pre- 
vious notions disturbed. A noted professor in a Scotch 
university refused all recognition of these researches, 
as long as he decently could do so. When ultimately 
compelled to make some allusion to them, he did it 
very briefly, accompanying it with the opinion that 
Mr. Davy ''was a very tiresome man." 

Correlation means the conversion of one thing into 
another thing. Thus, if I take a basin of water, and, 
placing it over a fire, bring it to the boiling-point, I 
change, or correlate, the water into steam. And now 
again, if 1 catch this steam and put it into the receiver 
of an engine and confine it there, so that in its expan- 
sion it can act alone upon the piston, I convert it, 
through the instrumentality of the machine, into power, 
and with the thing thus secured I drive a train of cars 
or a steamship. If a piece of zinc and a piece of copper 
are placed in a receiver together with a menstruum of any 
solving fluid, sulphuric acid for instance, an action of 
dissolution and combination, which at once commences, 
results in a new production, or a change of one thing, 
or force, into a new thing, — this new thing being, in 
this case, galvanism. If now, desirous of another con- 
version, I subject this force to the influence of an elec- 
tric machine, I possess myself of a new form of power, 
through its correlation into electricity. Electricity I 
may convert into heat, heat into vegetation, vegetation 
into a man, and so on in an eternal round. This, then, 
is correlation, or the conversion of one thing into 
another thing. 



54 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

Correlation is a sermon so loud, so grand, that all of 
earth, and sky, and heaven makes its voice.* 

Where may one begin to speak of correlation, — of 
the everything, and nothingness, of matter? Life is a 
circle, without beginning, without end ; there is no 
commencement, we may catch the link anywhere. To 
speak of bodily death is a misnomer, or, if by death we 
mean disappearance, then is the term of even cruder 
meaning ; a dead man disappears not even so rapidly 
as does a living one, and the more rapidly a live man 
dies, the more vigorously does he live. 

The tenure of a man upon what he holds is so slight 
that one may scarcely reckon the time in which he holds 

*■ " Two things," said Immanuel Kant, "fill me with awe, — tlie 
starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man." 

" In his hour of health, and strength, and sanity, when the stroke of 
action has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific 
investigator finds himself overshadowed by this awe of Kant. Break- 
ing contract with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with 
a power which gives fullness and tone to his existence, but which he 
can neither analyze nor comprehend." — Tyndall. 

" Positive philosophy maintains that within the existing order of the 
universe, or rather of the part of it known to us, the direct determining 
cause of every phenomenon is not supernatural, but natural. It is 
compatible with this to believe that the universe was created, and even 
that it is continuously governed by an intelligence, provided we 
admit that the intelligent governor adheres to fixed laws, which are 
only modified or counteracted by other laws of the same dispensation, 
and are never, either capriciously or providentially, departed from." — 
Mill. 

"A little philosophy," says Bacon, " inclineth men's minds to atheism, 
but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion ; for 
while the mind of man looketh upon causes scattered, it may sometimes 
rest in them and go no further ; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, 
confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and 
Deity." 



CORRELA TION. 



55 



it. The individuality, the Ego, is the inappreciable ; 
around this clusters that which we call the man, but 
which is, in fact, that which rather conceals him from 
our sight. The curling locks^ which the barber has just 
thrown among his refuse, are not our friend ; yet, only 
an hour back, we distinguished him by these very locks. 
The envelope of a man is truly of the dust ; and as dust 
it is with him to-day, it is with something or somebody 
else to-morrow. It is added to, or thrown off from, a 
man in every respiration, in every motion, at every 
thought, every turning. Let the blacksmith hammer 
with his brawny arm, and his biceps grow to clubs. 
Let the fakir bind up his leg, and it dwindles to a 
reed, too feeble for the support of a child. The epi- 
thelial scales which, in the morning ablution, are washed 
from the face of a beauty, may, on some other morning, 
adorn her tresses in the shape of a leaf from her garden ; 
while the leaf, faded and cast away, may, in its turn, 
give to the passing cow the means for the milk which 
gives back to beauty, in convenient season, the lost 
epiderm. 

Of matter, as the material, there is in the world just 
so much. We call nature lavish and prodigal, but this is 
not just. Nature is like unto a coiner, who, in his pro- 
duction, throws aside that which is of the same value as 
the gold which he perfects ; but he wastes not his residue : 
simply does he remelt it, and thus its coinable charac- 
teristics become as before. To stand with educated in- 
telligence in the presence of nature, is to stand before 
God and be dumb. Who may utter the simplicity, 
which is itself the stupendous ! Twenty-six marks are the 
life of all the tomes of the English language, — fewer 



56 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

elements (as we may some time come to learn) consti- 
tute the world. Take the gases, substances which we 
see not, yet themselves made up of less tangible things ; 
put together a few atoms of oxygen and a few atoms of 
hydrogen, and behold the wonderful result in water, — 
that same water which is in itself nearly all the body of 
a man. Take again a few atoms of oxygen and a few 
atoms of nitrogen, and behold atmospheric air, — that 
air which is the life and breath of the man. Will you 
distinguish between the piece of charcoal, which you 
throw from your soiled fingers as an offense, and the 
precious diamond so carefully guarded? — it is a few 
equivalents of carbon, only this. God plays with the 
elements as the poet with his letters, as the musician 
with his notes. Poetry is the correlation of the twenty- 
six marks of the alphabet into words, which words, in 
their turn, make ideas, and these, in turn, fire a soul 
or soothe it. Music is the correlation of seven notes 
into harmony, and harmony rolls from earth to heaven, 
and from heaven back again to earth. Shall not God, 
from a single element, make all things, as even from 
the wood of a single tree has a man made his house 
and the furniture of it ? I doubt me if our sixty-four 
elements shall not soon develop into compounds. I 
think it can scarcely be that Omnipotence needs more 
notes wherewith to make his harmony than does a man.* 

* It is suggestive that at a period when mankind had about wellnigh 
wavered from a polytheistic faith and the Greek mind had dawning over 
it monotheism, that Thales, the most reflective of his age, felt that he 
found a synonym, at least, of this God in Water. A distinctive character 
of the Ionic school was inquiry into the constitution of the universe. 
Thales, speculating upon this constitution, could not but strive, as re- 



CORRELATION. ^j 

Let us break this circle of life at the link of man. 
What is man ? A composition of body, of spirit, and 
of soul.* Let us analyze these. With the first, at 
least, we shall have little trouble, — to this our knowl- 
edge is quite equal. 

The anatomist, looking at man purely as an animal, 
discovers him to be a machine made up of, first, a bony 
framework, which affords to his form stability and up- 
rightness. That he may have the conveniences of mul- 
titudinous movements, he finds this skeleton composed 
of very many pieces, even so many as two hundred 
and six distinct bones; these, in character, differing 
as indications require of them, — some, for convenience 
in locomotion, being long ; some short, where strength 

marked by his biographer Lewis, to discover the one principle, the 
primary Fact, the substance of which all special existences were but the 
modes. Seeing around him constant transformations, — birth and death, 
change of shape, of size, and of modes of existence, — he could not re- 
gard any of these variable states of existence as existence itself. He 
therefore asked himself. What is the invariable existence of which these 
are the variable states ? In a word, what is the beginning of things ? 

"To ask this question was to open the era of philosophical inquiry. 
Hitherto men had contented themselves with accepting the world as 
they found it, with believing what they saw, and with adoring what 
they could not see." 

Thales felt that there was a vital question to be answered relative to 
the beginning of things. He looked around him, and the result of his 
meditation was the conviction that moisture was the beginning. He 
was impressed with this idea by examining the constitution of the earth. 
Here also he found moisture everywhere. All things he found nour- 
ished by moisture. Warmth itself he declared to proceed from moisture. 
The seeds of all things are moist. Water, when condensed, becomes 
earth. 

* To Anaxagoras, five hundred years before the Christian era, are we 
indebted for what may be termed the physiological recognition of a 
spirit force ; it was crude, but he had caught the idea. 



58 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

and compactness are required ; some flat, as where a 
cavity is needed, or extensive surface for attachments 
demanded; some irregular, as where indications are 
of special character. 

Passing from the general to a special examination of 
this framework, the inquirer finds his wonder begin as 
he recognizes how everything seems to have been con- 
sidered and provided for. Analyzing a young bone, 
for example, he finds that in its composition it is quite 
half made up of animal matter, differing in this respect 
from the bone of the adult, which contains not so much 
perhaps as twenty per cent. Here we have explained 
the infrequency of fractures in children, and recognize 
the Divinity that protects the tottering and uncertain 
footsteps of infancy ; the bone of a little child will 
bend, but it will hardly break. Again, let a long bone 
be examined, the bone of the arm, or of the thigh, as 
we may please to pick either up. In moving our own 
limbs we do not feel the weight of these bones, and yet, 
considering what the arms have to endure and to what 
the legs are subjected, we infer that they must be very 
strong, and this indeed they are, but made so, not through 
mass of material, but arrangement. Let a section be 
prepared of one of these, and the riddle is explained, — 
the bones are cylindriform : there is then very little 
weight, for it is not mass, but form, that is depended on. 
We illustrate this to ourselves by tearing in twain a sheet 
of foolscap paper. Rolling the two halves up, one in the 
form of a cylinder, the other with the layers tight and 
compact, we find the first to support a weight perfectly 
astonishing in comparison with the other ; and from 
our experiment, too, must we recognize that here it was 



CORRELA TION. 



59 



that man learned the strength of the tube. The skull, 
too, — examine it ; its office is the most delicate, and per- 
haps the most important, of the skeleton. Within its 
cavity is an organ so delicate that even the force of an 
ordinary blow, carried to it, would derange the harmony 
of its actions, whilst the shock which would come of 
jumping only a single foot, if not provided against, 
would destroy it forever. See the provision made by 
nature for the protection of this organ. The cranium, 
instead of being composed of a single piece, is made up 
of eight bones ; these, in their articulation, are so ar- 
ranged as to deaden and to disperse blows received by 
any one of them. But more important than this, we 
find, in examining any of the pieces, and, of course, 
the whole of the vault, that it is composed of three 
layers, the middle being so soft and spongy as to be 
completely non-conductive; showing to us at once that 
a blow received upon the external table, or layer, would 
have indeed to be very severe in character, if even it 
were so much as felt by the brain, or even, indeed, 
by the internal plate. This explanation we demonstrate 
by the experiment of the balls, so familiar to every 
student of physiology. Four or more balls, one being 
of spongy bone, the others of ivory, are suspended to a 
frame by strings of equal length, so that when the balls 
are in position each rests one against the other. If the 
spongy ball be removed from the line, and the first 
ivory ball be drawn back, say one foot, and then be 
allowed suddenly to fall against its neighbor, it will be 
seen that the force of the blow is transmitted from ball 
to ball, as proven by the last one flying off in the direc- 
tion of the impulse given by the first ; indeed, measure- 



6o ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

ment will show that so fully has the force of the blow 
been transmitted, that the distance passed over by the 
last ball is almost equal to that of the ball giving the 
blow, so direct and full has been the transmission of 
the impulse. Repeat now the experiment, putting the 
spongy ball in the line : the last ball does not move, 
the blow has not now been transmitted, the cellular 
ball has absorbed the whole of it. 

The relation of the brain to the trunk is precisely on 
the same principle. A shock received upon the feet, 
from falling or jumping, is entirely lost as it tends to 
pass from vertebra to vertebra, — cartilages, placed be- 
tween each of these bones, breaking the conduction and 
completely absorbing the force. 

Covering the framework of a man are the muscles — 
instruments of leverage, every one of them — soft, yield- 
ing, yet possessed of a force that explores seas and 
overruns territories. A muscle in man differs in no 
respect from the meat of a butcher's stall ; but how 
wonderful is that which so little attracts observation ! 
Pull a muscle to pieces: it is composed of a hundred 
little muscles, and these little muscles, in turn, are made 
up of a hundred others. It is no matter that we term 
these latter fasciculi and ultimate fibers; the greater 
differs in no respect, save in bulk, from the smaller. 

A muscle possesses a life force peculiar to itself: we 
call it contractility. As with the sensitive plant, apply 
an irritant, and instantly it contracts, or shuts upon 
itself. Not only does it possess this life while the man, 
of which it is a part, is said to live, but even after men 
call him dead does it continue. Prove this with the 
electric shock, and the life of the muscles will speak 



CORRELATION. 6 1 

from their dead and senseless envelope of integuments. 
Take the heart from a living sturgeon : the heart is 
simply a muscle ; lay it, all palpitating and beating as it 
is, upon a plate ; it will palpitate and beat for days, as 
though it were a perfect life in itself The phenomenon 
is not less wonderful that we say the heart possesses a 
ganglion of its own. 

Shall we look at the liver of a man ? it is a great viscus, 
the very largest gland in the body. To understand it, 
men have had to study it in sections and relations. 
And yet, coming at last to the anatomical ultimate, we 
describe it as a cell, a very little cell, with a tube of 
outlet from it. Around this cell, enveloping it, are 
vessels of supply blood, and vessels of venous blood, 
— this is all. From the vena portae, bile is eliminated, 
and the associate veins are simply the carriers away of 
refuse material. The little tube seen passing from the 
cell is a bile duct. This is the liver, all of it. The 
great viscus is only a repetition of these little cells. It 
took, however, many generations and ages to make this 
analysis, and even now that it is made, the miracle of 
bile secretion is not less a mystery ; for why should the 
little cell make bile ? 

Take next the brain. It is a soft, semi-fattish-looking 
mass, the most unsolid and unsubstantial seeming thing 
in the body. Let us analyze it : out of one hundred 
parts, some eighty are nothing but water, such water as 
one washes his hands in.* Eight more parts might not 
be told from the white of a common ^g^. A little fat, 

*' The writer will not be understood as expressing himself in the 
chemical sense. 



62 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

red and colorless, some osmazome, lactates, and phos- 
phates, and this is all, physically, of that instrument 
which acts to the revolutionizing of lands and over- 
turning of continents. Who may explain it ? Oceans 
lie still and idle in the summer sunshine, albmnen, in 
great excess, rests inert in every hennery, fat covers the 
shambles, and inorganic matter forms the hills of the 
earth. 

Is it wonderful ? is it beyond faith ? Yet Dante, and 
Shakspeare, and Milton, move and thrill these brains 
with twenty-six marks. It is wonderful, yet is it sim- 
ple. Further does the likeness go : letters, while so few, 
are exhaustless. Who shall write them out, or who fail 
to find them for his transpositions ? G-o-d, spells, and 
implies to us, all that is great, all that is glorious, all 
that is worshipful. The very same letters reversed, and 
a common animal is set before our imagination. A 
brain — the brain of Plato — buried, or planted by a hog- 
pen, comes back, most likely, nothing better than a 
thistle, scattering weeds instead of truths. 

Even a brain — we will not say mind — is matter, and 
whether wheat or weeds shall come from it, must de- 
pend on the relations of its particles to the something 
superior to it. This is in the province of creation. 
Does such an argument convince a man of the absence 
of free agency ? Well, then, let it excuse the shiftless 
poverty that tills not a field, because, left to itself, 
weeds cover it. 

The body of a man is a machine, from which, as a 
model, all invention has drawn its inspiration. So 
beautiful is it in its proportions, so accurate in its 
adaptation of means to ends, so costly, apparently, in 



CORRELA TION. (i^, 

its apparatus, that one looking at it without experience 
would say, Surely so grand a thing was made to last 
forever. Does it? 

To deny the resurrection of the body is to speak the 
words of a fool. As two added to two makes four, so 
surely is the body of a man resurrected, and so surely 
does it live forever. And this is the resurrection of 
the body, — as science demonstrates it. 

The body of a man, be he king or subject, wise in 
all learning or blank in all ignorance, is matter, simply 
matter, — the same kind of matter precisely as exists in 
the horse which he drives, or the dust he strides over. 
The bones which bear him upright differ not in analysis 
from those of the cat purring at his feet, neither do his 
muscles present differences with those of the ox he kills 
and feeds upon. 

When a man dies we bury him from sight. But when, 
after a greater or lesser length of time, we open the 
tomb wherein we laid him, he is gone. Where ? 

When a stick of wood, tough and gnarled, and re- 
sistive of the axe, is laid upon the blazing coals, it soon 
disappears, and nothing is left of it, not even, after a 
very short time, the handful of ashes ; it is gone. 
Where? 

When the dead bird, which yesterday was killed and 
left lying in the forest, is, after a week, searched for, it 
is not found ; it is gone. Where ? All are on the 
road of their resurrection. 

A man, a log of wood, or bird, subjected to analysis, 
are found made up of like material, differing alone in the 
combination and arrangement of particles. As respect 
is paid to these particles, nature shows no preference, — ■ 



64 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

decomposing and disintegrating a dead prince with as 
little regard for the odor of the sulphuretted hydrogen 
evolved, as though the noble had been the hound with 
which, in chase, he may have lost his life. 

Decomposition is recomposition, and recomposition 
is resurrection. Of the handful of dust left to us of the 
dear friend dead ten years ago, we see that part of the 
body we knew most resistive of change : the rest is gone ; 
part of it before first he was covered from our sight, for 
even then his eyeballs had sunken and his cheeks had 
become wan and emaciated. 

The brain of a man we have seen to be composed 
almost wholly of water ; so, in like, is every portion of 
his body. The evaporation of the fluid constituents 
of a human body carries full ninety per cent, of it into 
the atmosphere.* What becomes of this part of him? 
It mingles with the moisture of the elements, and soon, 
condensed into drops of water, falls back to earth, to 
be drunk by you and by me, by the herd of the field, 
by the forest oak, and by the lily nestling at its root ; 
and thus, sucked up by the veins of a man, or cow, by 
the rootlets of the tree, or flowers, it finds a new exist- 
ence almost ere it has lost the old. What of the 
residuum ? 

When a man has consumed his wood, he saves his 
ashes for the cornfield. Now, for experiment's sake, he 
plants of his grain two hills; into one he puts ashes, 
into the other none. When the harvest-time comes, 
lo, where the ashes were placed is his crop double. 

* Blumenbach possessed the perfect mummy of an adult Tenerififian, 
which, with its entire viscera, weighed only seven and a half pounds. 



CORRELA TION. 65 

Then he says, ''My ashes have I turned into corn;" 
and this he knows is truth. Then, weak from his labor, 
and lank, he eats of his corn, and new life and vigor 
come to him. Again he says, "I have changed my 
corn into a man ;" and this he also feels to be a truth. 
Where the battle-field was covered most thickly with 
the slain, men come to gaze in wonder at the luxuri- 
ance of the verdure. Alas ! the husbands, the fathers, 
the sons, long looked for at the family hearth, are, by 
the wand of the enchanter, converted into the long 
vines and rank grass that moan uneasily in the night 
wind. 

An eccentric man declaring he would not lose the 
limb which had been amputated, buried it by the root 
of a grapevine ; the crop, when the season came, was 
threefold. As he ate of the fruit he said, "Thus I 
resurrect myself to myself." And surely he did so. 

Where the dead dog rotted on the bank-side, the sod 
is rank with life, — there a-re maggots, plenty of them, 
but the dog is gone. In turn, the birds of the air will 
find the worms, and thus, with wings, dog and maggots 
shall fly through the sky — simple translation through 
the decomposition of compounds into elements, and 
the recomposition of elements into compounds — this is 
the story of the circle of matter. 

Is it horrible thus to dispose of a man ? The problem 
of the body it is, remember, we are discussing. A man 
is more than the body ; to confound the body and the 
man is worse than is confusing the clothing and the 
body. 

Man is a complex organization : this is most true ; 
but the law which evolves and creates him works 

5 



66 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

with as little effort as that which produces a diatome or 
a sponge. Indeed, I have frequently thought that the 
overweening self-respect a man feels for his body must 
come, necessarily, of an ignorance which excludes him 
from an ability to compare himself with the rest of crea- 
tion. Matter is matter. The autumn frosts wash out the 
fresh green from the waving leaf, and the autumn frosts 
wash out the fresh bloom from the cheeks of beauty ; 
and beauty and the leaf fall, and mingle their dust, on 
a common floor. 

SPIRIT. 

This is the second person in the trinity of a man. 

The relation of the spirit to a man is of the earth, 
earthy. True, we may not define its form, neither 
render its analysis ; but this is only because of inability 
from ignorance, — it is a something that escapes a posi- 
tive demonstration, yet not negative proof. "Answer 
me a question," said a rich Hindoo to a begging fakir, 
*'and I will relieve thy necessities. Thou sayest there 
is a God, and that thou knowest it. Show him to me 
and tell me what color he is." The fakir sat musing 
a moment ; then, gathering a ball of clay from the 
ground whereon he sat, suddenly, and without warn- 
ing, cast it with force into the face of the inquirer, 
who, in pain, ran roaring away. ''Thou hast pain," 
screamed the fakir after him ; '' thou knowest it. Show 
it to me and tell me what color it is." 

When a man lies sleeping, wrapped in profoundest 
slumber, he breathes as easily, digests as comfortably, 
aerates his blood as fully, and performs all functions 
of organic life as satisfactorily, as when his most wake- 



CORRELA TION. 6 7 

fill moments maybe spent in considering these things ; 
and he does thus because these functions are presided 
over by a power which can operate entirely independ- 
ent of his judgment or direction. The relation he, in 
his Ego, holds to these things is as the relation of a 
master to the servants in his kitchen, — the servants, 
not the master, do the work, and the work can go 
on, even although the master travels thousands of miles 
away, just as it goes on when, with watchful eye, he 
stands on the threshold of the scullery. 

Let us look at the natural reasons for this. 

Examining the constitution of a man, we find tkat 
he has a twofold nervous system, distinct, indeed, as is 
the parlor of a house from the kitchen. The one, the 
cerebro-spinal, occupies the cranial cavity and spinal 
canal. It is the very lord of the mansion, or, better 
speaking, it is the residence of the lord, — his living- 
room. The second, the sympathetic, consists of a 
number of little bodies, or ganglia, scattered over the 
house, standing in place like so many servants, which, 
indeed, they are, each one having a special duty to 
perform, and doing it without, in many instances, re- 
ceiving ever a command from the occupier of the 
premises. The body, as an organism, might be truth- 
fully likened to a hotel, in which, with no directions 
from a guest, the work, without confusion or fail, goes 
on, the Resident finding all his wants anticipated. 
The relation of the sympathetic nervous system to the 
cerebro-spinal is no closer, nor more intimate, than that 
of parlor and kitchen through the bell-wires ; indeed, 
the more one studies the relation, the more he is im- 
pressed with such an analogy. The parlor can com- 



68 ODD HOURS 01^ A PHYSICIAN. 

mand the kitchen, as it is the higher power, but a 
physical kitchen will work, even though, as in the 
person of an idiot, no parlor occupant resides in the 
house. Query ? 

As a servant, in his physical conformation, differs 
not from the master of a house, so do not the ganglia 
of the sympathetic system differ from that of the great 
brain. Let a brain be examined, and it is found made 
up of white and gray matter ; let a ganglion be bisected, 
and the two colors are found in like relations. Ex- 
amine in turn these white and gray substances, and 
both are found composed of cells and conducting fila- 
ments. The analogy, however, stops here : the houses 
are alike in their general construction, but the occu- 
pants differ vastly. The resident of one is spirit ; of 
the other. Soul. 

The subserviency and relationship of spirit to matter 
are exhibited in the constant union of the two, and in 
the similarity of the natures of both. Matter belongs 
specially to no individual body, nor does spirit ; neither 
has its Ego. As the world contains just so much matter, 
which matter correlates itself from thing to thing, and 
is constant to no thing, so spirit is an essence diffused 
through all things, the special property of no thing. 
There is a spirit of the tree which throws forth the leaves 
folded in the branches, there is a spirit of the ox which 
chews its cud by the roadside, there is a spirit of the man 
which circulates his blood and elaborates the chyle that 
nourishes him ; but the spirit is a common spirit, as is 
common and transmigratable, the matter of the tree, 
the ox, and the man. The same spirit is of the tree 
to-day, of the ox to-morrow, of the man the next day. 



CORRELA TION. 



69 



When a grain of wheat is buried in the earth, it impreg- 
nates, through the spirit that is in it, surrounding influ- 
ences, and springs up out of the ground enshrined in a 
new body; and the very matter of which the grain was 
compo-sed, rotted, and resolved into elements, is sucked 
up and made new in that which came from it, — body 
is correlated through spirit, and spirit is enshrined 
through body. 

But, by the first grain was sown a second, yet from 
it came nothing. Wherefore ? This second grain was 
matter alone ; it had no life. Because, then, that it 
produced not as the first grain, it differed from it in 
the absence of something, and this something was that 
wherein consisted its vitality, — a something unseen, 
unseeable, yet recognized by every man who distin- 
guishes of one thing that it lives, of another that it is 
dead. 

Is, then, that which is the life of a thing of less con- 
sequence than the matter composing the thing, that 
when it goes out it is annihilated? Nothing is annihi- 
lated ; everything is immortal, — at least in the earthly 
sense. What, then, becomes of spirit? Just precisely 
what becomes of matter ; it is used again, — used over 
and over forever. There is just so much spirit to 
animate just so much matter ; from necessity they must 
correlate in concert, and this they do. 

The life which went from the grain of wheat found a 
new combination, as did the matter of the grain, and 
both exist to-day as both existed in the beginning. 



70 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



SOUL. 



What may a man write, or think, of his soul, — the 
divine part of himself, the Holy Ghost residing in a 
temple of flesh ? The soul of a man is the man, the 
only thing worthy of consideration, or thought, or care. 
It is the Ego, the individuality, that which is, and shall 
be, the only thing which changes, or correlates, never. 

'^ I cannot," said the monarch Cyrus, when he came 
to die, "persuade myself to think that the soul of a 
man, after having sustained itself in a mortal body, 
should perish, when delivered out of it, for want of it." 

Epictetus, when suffering agony from the cruel treat- 
ment of his master Epaphroditus, smiled as he told 
him, "That if his leg was twisted longer it would 
break;" and this did result without disturbing his 
composure. When asked how he could maintain his 
equanimity, he replied, *' That the body was external." 

"The soul," believed Plato, "is, and ever was, im- 
mortal. In its anterior state of existence it had accu- 
rate conceptions of the eternal truth. It was face to 
face with existence. Now, having descended upon 
earth, having passed into a body, and being subject to 
the hinderances of that bodily imprisonment, it is no 
longer face to face with existence ; it can see existence 
only through the ever-changing flux of material phe- 
nomena. When, for example, we see a stone, all that 
our senses convey is the appearance of that stone ; but, 
as the stone is large or small, the soul apprehends the 
idea of greatness ; and this apprehension is a reminis- 
cence of the world of ideas awakened by the sensation. 
So, when we see or hear of a benevolent action, besides 



CORRELA TION. 



71 



the fact, our soul apprehends the idea of goodness. 
And all our recollection of ideas is performed in the 
same way. It is as if, in our youth, we had listened to 
some mighty orator, whose printed speech we are read- 
ing in old age. That printed page, how poor and faint 
a copy of that thrilling eloquence ! how we miss the 
speaker's piercing, vibrating tones, his flashing eye, his 
flushing face ! And yet, that printed page, in some dim 
way, recalls these tones, recalls that face, and stirs us 
somewhat as we then were stirred. Long years and 
many avocations have somewhat efl'aced the impression 
he first made, but the printed words serve faintly to 
recall it. Thus it is with our immortal souls. They 
have sojourned in that immortal region, where the voice 
of truth rings clearly, where the aspect of truth is un- 
veiled, undimmed. They are now sojourning in this 
fleeting, flowing river of life, stung with resistless long- 
ings for the skies, and solaced only by the reminiscences 
of that former state, which these fleeting, broken, inco- 
herent images of ideas awaken."* 

''Know thyself," said Proclus, repeating the Delphian 
inscription, "that thou mayest know the essence from 
whose source thou art derived. Know that of the 
Divine One thy soul is but a ray." 

The expression "ray" is, to the mind of the writer, 
one of the most suggestive in relation with the soul. 
Man was simply a mould of earth ; God breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living 
soul, — i.e. into him entered of God Himself: "Know 
that thy body is the temple of the Holy Ghost." " De- 

* Lewis. 



72 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSIC nV. 



file not thy body, which is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost. ' ' Floating through the German type of thought, 
having especially no author, is the enunciation, '^ Man 
is God and God is man." The idea might invoke a 
volume of reflections. It is not sacrilege thus to asso- 
ciate ourselves, our souls, with whence we came. Yet, 
may two classes alone consider such a relation without 
confusion, — the profoundly philosophical, and the pro- 
foundly simple. 

Falling back upon the assertion, that, in the common 
voice is found the truth, it is felt and recognized that 
every instinct of man points him to immortality, — no 
faith, no doctrine, no belief has the widespread base 
of the immortality of the soul, — in some form or other 
it is the faith of every living being. The religious sen- 
timent itself is, as remarked by Baring Gould, a fairly 
presumable proof that there is a something to be ob- 
tained beyond mere worldly good. '' Every other 
instinct," suggests Mr. Gould, ''is seen to have some 
positive aim and object, and it is against the analogy 
of nature to suppose the religious instinct an exception." 

Psychologically viewed, catalepsy might be described 
as a condition of the body, in which, for some of sundry 
reasons, the soul is temporarily unable to make use of it. 

Somnambulism yields a negative proof of the separ- 
ability of spirit force and soul force. A somnambulist 
walks, precisely as he digests. At the hour of his wan- 
dering one recognizes (aside from the excito-motor) 
no controlling or directing influence. The senses, the 
avenues pertaining alone to soul-life, have in them no 
sensori-motor expression ; the man looks, but he sees 
not ; he listens, but hears not. If he feels, it is simply 



CORRELA TION. 



73 



with organic sensation, and with no instrumentality of 
appreciation as the sense proper of touch is concerned. 

''When we are awake," says Aristotle, ''we have a 
world in common. When we dream, each has his own. ' ' 

A special sense destroyed, it is seen how the soul 
struggles not to lose, in the direction, the power of 
communicating with the world. A soul having lost its 
avenue of sight, will feel' a color, or co-ordinate its 
movements through the senses of hearing and touch. 
A deaf man will hear through his eyes, as, when blind, 
he reads through his fingers. 

" If I would epitomize Schelling," says Mason, in his 
"Recent British Philosophy," "it would be in having 
him express faith, not as a spasmodic action of the 
soul straining into a void, but as that certain intuition 
of absolute truth which has been, is, and ever will be, 
the sustenance of mankind, the basis of religion, and 
of all great action," — soul instinct. 

Animism, among the lower races of mankind, is 
markedly exhibited in their uninstructed perceptions, — 
an illustration of which I certainly may not better 
render than by allusion to a late review, in the Psycho- 
logical J^ournal of Medicine, of the new work of E. B. 
Taylor on "The Philosophy of Religion among the 
Lower Races of Mankind," and on which subject, for its 
widest range, the reader may be referred to the " History 
of Philosophy," by the learned George Henry Lewis. 

Religion, with heathens, if we choose so to express 
ourselves (though I must affirm that to me fe^v appear 
possessed of higher or purer light than was Confucius 
or Socrates), divides itself into two great divisions: i. 
Souls. 2. Spirits. 



74 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



''The savage mind," says this review, ''appears to 
have been especially struck by two groups of phenomena, 
which they endeavored to account for on a scientific 
theory. 

(a) " That which constitutes the difference between 
a dead and a living body, the fading of light from the 
glazed eyes, the cessation of breath, the stoppage of pul- 
sation, the loss of consciousness and voluntary motion, — 
in a word, of the phenomena classed together under the 
heading 'Life.' These they especially associated with 
the breath. How naturally we may learn from the 
story of the deaf, aumb, and blind Laura Bridgman's 
dream, which she described by the gesture of taking 
something from her lips, explaining in words, ' I 
dreamed God took up my breath to heaven.' The 
language of the world will express this deep-lying con- 
nection in the many cases where the word breath has 
come to denote life or soul : from the Australian wang 
and the Malay nawa, to the Semitic nephesh and the 
Indo-European pneuma, anima, ghost, etc. 

{b) "The phantom copy of man seen in dreams and 
visions, apparently thin enough to flit through space 
and permeate solid nature, and to evade the dreamer's 
waking grasp. This is especially and naturally asso- 
ciated with the shadow, an association also well ex- 
pressed in languages, from the Ojibway otahchuk to 
the Indo-European skia, umbra, shade." 

"Now, the savage to a remarkable extent connects 
these two conceptions into what may be called an ap- 
paritional soul, a ghost-soul. He considers that what 
causes death and what causes visions and dreams are 
one and the same. There are some who try to separate 



COR RE LA TION. ^^ 

them, as the Greenlanders and the Feejeeans ; but the 
generally received connection of the life with the 
phantom into a soul-ghost is the very key to savage 
psychology." 

''Thus the Nicaraguans held that when a man dies 
there comes out of his mouth something resembling a 
person, which is the life, and which departs to where the 
man is, but the body remains here. Parallel to this is 
the African conception of the man's shadow seized by 
a monster, whereupon the man afterwards dies. The 
soul-ghost appears in dreams and visions. Live men's 
souls may do this, as when a Feejeean's soul goes out 
in sleep and troubles other people ; but especially the 
souls of the dead are supposed to do this. Thus Wilson 
says of the negroes, ' That their dreams are visits from 
the souls of deceased friends,' and the habit of talking 
dreams over makes them dream the more, till they have 
almost as much intercourse with the dead in sleep as 
with the living in waking, and can hardly distinguish 
dream from fact." 

"The animistic theory, as it explains death, so among 
many races explains sleep, and with this dreaming works 
in, as when the Greenlander lies insensible while his 
soul goes out visiting and hunting. The Karens clev- 
erly account for our seeing known places in dreams by 
saying that the leip-pya can only find the way where it 
has been before in life. It explains coma (where the 
body lies senseless while the mind wakes with new ex- 
periences), as when Australian or Khond sorcerers go 
out of their bodies for spirit-knowledge, or when, in 
the Vatus-dcela Saga, the Fins sent to visit Iceland lie 
rigid while their souls go out on the errand and return 



7 6 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

with information. Of classic tales appropriate to these 
things, is the story of Hermotimus, whose body his wife 
burnt while his soul was gone out in search of spiritual 
knowledge. It explains sickness, as when the Karens 
call back the kelah of a sick man, and the sick Feejeean 
may be heard crying for his own soul to come back." 

'' When the body dies, the soul departs to its place. 
Not content with this, the lower races assist nature, and 
when a warrior or chief dies, dispatch wives and slaves, 
whose souls are to continue their earthly relations. Thus 
the Feejeean and African are buried with wives, slaves, 
etc., the custom extending upward in the Hindoo 
suttee, etc." 

''That animals, 'our younger brothers,' as the North 
American calls them, have souls like men, is an obvious 
inference to the lower races. Therefore animals also 
are sacrificed for the dead, — the horse for the red In- 
dian, the dog for the Aztec and Greenlander, the 
camel for the Bedouin." 

"As regards the details of the doctrine of a future 
life among the lower races, no immortality is recog- 
nized, — the soul is ethereal and surviving, not imma- 
terial and immortal. It carries on a mere continued 
existence, as shown by dreams and visions. The de- 
scriptions of future existence current among the lower 
races are not limited to a single theory, but may include 
every idea likely to occur to them. The conception 
may be roughly divided as follows : 

I. "The doctrine of the ghost hovering or wandering 
on earth, or coming back occasionally to visit its former 
home, is displayed among mankind from savagery up- 
ward, especially causing the prevalent fear of graves; 



CORRELA TION. 



77 



and the practice of offering food for the dead, usual 
among most savage races, lasting on among such nations 
as the ancient Romans and modern Chinese, and even 
now surviving in form in the Eastern Church. 

2. ''The doctrine of metempsychosis. The trans- 
migration of the souls of the dead into other human 
beings is well marked among the Greenlanders, where 
widows will make it a plea for the adoption of an orphan 
child by some rich man, declaring it to have received 
the soul of some one of his family; or among tribes of 
Nootka Sound, who account for the existence of a dis- 
tant tribe speaking the same language, by supposing 
them animated by the souls of their own dead. In 
Africa the dead are buried near the living, that their 
souls may enter new-born children. The indigenes of 
Africa, America, and Asia account in this way for like- 
ness to deceased relatives, and look for personal likeness 
and marks of ancestors on new-born infants. The be- 
lief in transmigration into animals is well marked among 
the lower races, as in Greenland, where a man will avoid 
a particular animal as food, on the score of a deceased 
kinsman having passed into such ; among the Icannas 
of Brazil, who imagine that brave warriors become 
beautiful birds, and cowards, reptiles ; or the Zulus, 
who believe that certain harmless common house-snakes 
are animated by the souls of their deceased kindred." 

In the very center of the encephalic mass of man is a 
little body not larger than a pea, called by the anatomist 
the pineal gland. This body, the ancients affirmed, was 
the seat of the soul. They thought this because, running 
from it, they discovered certain lines which seemed to 
them as reins, through which the body might be in- 



78 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

ferred to be directed, and because (permitted alone to 
dissect idiots) they found this little body to be filled 
with sandy particles. Recognizing a distinction be- 
tween spirit and soul, and not allowed to examine the 
pineal gland of a perfect man, the inference was a 
natural one, that in the presence of this acervulus the 
idiot differed from others; and as what they esteemed 
the soul was absent in the idiot, so, as all other parts of 
his brain had a normal appearance, it seemed a just 
conclusion that here was its seat. 

The brain of a man, with the exception of a circum- 
ferential wall of cells, and a ganglion lodged here and 
there, is simply a mass of filaments or cords. Cleverly 
traced, these cords are found to run to every avenue of 
sense, and to associate with them return cords from 
such avenues, so tliat it would seem as if the creative 
faculty of the mass lay strictly and exclusively in the 
wall of cells; and here, differentially judged of, it does 
reside. Now, as we understand that the actions of 
this part of the system are not an immediate necessity 
of organic life, we locate here the highest relations of 
the human organization, and look here to see what we 
may of the material associations of the soul. 

As a king sits high above his subjects upon his throne, 
and from it speaks behests that all obey, so from the 
throne of the brain cells is all the kingdom of a man 
directed, controlled, and influenced ; for this occupant 
the eyes watch, the ears hear, the tongue tastes, the 
nostril smells, the skin feels ; for it language is ex- 
hausted of its treasures, and life of its experiences ; loco- 
motion is accomplished, quiet insured. When it wills, 
body and spirit are goaded like overdriven horses. 



CORRELA TION. 



79 



When it allows, rest and sleep may come for recupera- 
tion. In short, the slightest penetration may not foil 
to perceive that all other parts obey this part, and are 
as but ministers to its necessities. 

But we are not to be understood as confounding the 
encephalic cells with the soul. It is only that through 
these, as a mechanism, the soul finds its expression, 
just as steam must have an engine for its expression. 
Steam, however, is not less motive force, or the equiva- 
lent of it, that it rushes unconfined through the atmos- 
phere, and soul is not less soul, or less life, in lacking 
a machine, or agent, through which it may hold com- 
munion and discourse with earth. The oratorios of 
Haydn are not organs, violins, and cymbals, but these 
material things are the instruments through which alone 
the oratorios speak, and without them the grand strains 
remain voiceless. 

In what men call dreams, seem best exhibited the 
separability from the body and the individuality of the 
soul. Not only this, but its habits, when disembodied, 
may be understood ; more even than this : it should 
dispossess man of the regard for his flesh, exhibiting to 
him, as it does, that his pains and his aches, his cares 
and his anxieties, his slow progresses and his cloggy 
relations, are not really of himself, but of the dead 
weight which, in his body, he carries. A dream would 
seem to be simply the stepping out of one's self from 
the confinement of his house. The house of a man, the 
body, lies sleeping upon its bed ; the Ego stays with it, 
or not, as it wills. Think what a dream is. And is not 
that what the soul is? No bounds or space confine it, 
a body it makes to itself at will, it is as much in a 



So ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

body of its requirements when out of its flesh as when 
iii it; in short, it is, to its own will, omnipotent; how 
it shall move, who can say? What it may do, who may 
imagine? Height, depth, width, length, these are 
boundaries lost to a soul the moment it disembodies 
itself. "Who seeth me in his dreams," said Moham- 
med, "seeth me truly." 

To know the soul apart from the body is to know one's 
self, and only thus, I conceive, may one's self be known. 
Can any man so contemplate his individuality without 
desiring to come to such an estate ? Can he look upon 
death longer as a something to be feared and dreaded? 
If a man may hunger not, what to him are the anxieties 
of support ? If he thirst not, what to him the drought 
that consumes? If the elements may not -incommode, 
what to him are the conveniences the body demands? 

The Ego — the soul — is the relation of man to God, 
all else of him, body and spirit, are of his relations to 
earth. The body and the spirit of a man change in 
their association with him at every breath and in every 
pulsation. The Ego — the identity, the individuality 
— is, and shall be. This science stands in awe before, 
— this is above science. This science recognizes, but is 
dumb in its presence.* 

•■•■ It is felt that this conclusion of these thoughts is not fully satisfac- 
tory, but to extend them before the general reader would not be to add 
to their interest, and might possibly lead to undesirable confusion. 
Many aspects of view necessarily present themselves for recognition ; 
for example, it might be asked, wherein differ the encephaUc cells of 
the lower animals from those of man? Or what is the soul state of an 
infant without intelligence? Or what is the condition of an anen- 
cephalia? Such questions the learned reader may not fail to perceive 
would be injudiciously broached, when only a few pages could be 
spared for their consideration. 



THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. 

I WAS sitting, one morning of the past winter, before 
the great furnace in the laboratory of the Professor- 
of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, — a 
place most promotive of reflections, — and as I looked 
through its open mouth on the mass of glowing coals, and 
about over the mysteriously furnished walls, and into the 
nooks and chinks, filled with multitudinous and strange 
things, I thought, naturally, of the alchemists of the 
olden time, who, in just such mystic places, had con- 
sumed their gold and their crucibles, their hopes and 
their aspirations, their health and happiness, in attempts 
to discover the philosopher's stone. And I thought, 
as I sat there, how wonderful it was, how more than 
passing wonderful, that these learned and reflecting 
men failed to see that that for which they sought lay at 
their feet, and enveloped them in its atmosphere ! 

You have read, in the Arabian Nights, the story of 
the Fisherman and the Genie. How, when the vase 
was opened, there ascended from it what was apparently 
a meaningless smoke, but by degrees the intangible 
vapor collected itself and assumed, at length, a solid 
body, and became in shape as a genie, greater in him- 
self than all the giants. 

From the vase of life, and from life's beginning, has 

been going out a vapor, — the vapor of its truths and 

experience, — a vapor which, to this nineteenth century, 

and which, to the centuries of the alchemist, should 

6 (Si) 



82 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

have been seen to be the genie greater in himself than 
all the giants. Closer and closer has this vapor col- 
lected and embodied itself, until at length, with the 
astonished fisherman of the Bosphorus, we see the genie, 
and we exclaim^ "The Philosopher's Stone." 

Aladdin, you remember, when he needed an answer 
to a question, or felt a want, rubbed a lamp which he 
had obtained ; from this lamp came a genie who never 
failed him, — the lamp was truly Aladdin's philosopher's 
stone. 

Tarquinius Superbus possessed the Sibylline leaves, — 
the oracles of the Sibyls were the voces deorum. 

Themonce sat upon the tripod, and from her lips fell 
jewels. Jupiter was the inspirer of wisdom, and the 
uttered words commuted themselves into gold for the 
adornment of the shrine. 

If you had a stone, or lamp, or leaves, which, being 
consulted, would tell you everything you might know 
for your good, would you not say, '-'This wealth of a 
possession is surely the philosopher's stone"? 

Well, as my own uses at least are concerned, I have 
found such a stone, and this is the history of its dis- 
covery. See if it may be also the amulet for you. 

I am the fortunate owner of a cozy, comfortably-situ- 
ated country house. When, from the great world, from 
the noise and confusion of the bustling town, I find 
myself in its vine-covered porch ; when, seated in easy 
indolence, my eye wanders over the far-stretching pros- 
pect before me, looking at the white wings of ships 
carrying their wealth of freight along the wide river, 
listening to the songs of men in tlie fields ; and when 
the sturdy, ringing blows of my neighbor the black- 



THE riHLOSOrilER'S STONE. 



83 



smith, at the bottom of the hill, make a kind of 
dreamy music to the summer afternoon, then I have 
always gone stone hunting. 

One afternoon — a very sleepy kind of a one it was, 
too — in August, I sat upon the porch of the country 
house retrospecting. I had thought as I sat there of 
many things, — things which had long since passed 
wholly away, save in the odor of their memory. 

I had recalled, I remember distinctly, an incident of 
some fifteen years back, when, on the very threshold 
of my professional life, I had found myself, one summer 
morning, seated, in contemplative mood, in Washington 
Square, — in this sad square where, beneath the pro- 
faning tread of the indifferent passers, lie entombed 
that which was the flesh and blood, the hopes, the 
sorrows, and the joys of many citizens carried off by 
pestilence, — nothing to mark their resting-place, their 
requiem unsung, save by the soughing branches of the 
great trees which live in the glad sunshine above them. 
Of these mortals, their lamps out, their individual 
memories lacking a name, I sat there thinking; of the 
living, too, I thought. What is it to live? I asked 
myself. I was just then twenty-five, and the blood was 
running through my veins like molten lava, — mine was 
all the vigor of a horse fresh for the race. I felt I could 
not, would not, come to such feelingless dust as lay be- 
neath me. ''Dum vivimus, vivamus. If I had to die, 
I would first live ;" this I said. 

What is it to live ? To this problem my mind con- 
tinually reverted. What shall a man do to get the most 
out of his life? At five-and-twenty all feel alike, all ask 
about the same questions. Well, what was the first 



84 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSIC IAN. 

answer that came to me, and what is the first answer 
that comes to every man at five-and-twenty ? Ah, 
Schiller ! — Schiller, like Byron, immortal to the man 
young and lusty. 

"Wer liebt nicht Weib, Wein und Gesang, 
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang."* 

On the Orange Street side of Washington Square 
stands a very plain Quaker meeting-house. I was at- 
tracted by the quiet looks of the people, as they passed 
in at its wide, inviting gate; and having nothing to do, 
for I was without a patient, I crossed over and Avent in 
with them. 

In this Quaker meeting I sat ; an hour, perhaps, the 
silence remained unbroken. Finally there arose an 
old silver-haired woman, and the words she spoke have 
lived through all the changes of these fifteen years, and 
that August afternoon they had repeated themselves in 
the porch with the ring of their original freshness. 

"Why," said this good woman with a message, 
''why gad ye about the earth seeking that happiness 
which is to be found alone within thine own heart?" 

The evolution of a thought or an idea is held by 
many men as unaccountable, — is so, perhaps. How 
ideas evolve themselves from things as frequently unlike 
as like we may not decide, unless to say there is a 
Providence which disposes, let man propose as he will. 
''Make this ^gg stand upon its end," said Christopher 
Columbus to the learned men who sat in judgment upon 
his designs. From whence was that thought, the more 

*" Quoted from Luther by Schiller. 



THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. 85 

wonderful from its simplicity, which cracked in the end 
of the tg<g and thus supported it upright? "That 
apple," said Sir Isaac Newton, ''tells me the unknown 
secret." And now all schoolboys comprehend the 
idea of gravitation. Yet before the secret in its full- 
ness was divulged, countless had been the apples that 
had fallen, and countless the eyes which had marked 
them fall ; but in this particular one alone was found 
the philosopher's stone. Even the stone of Kepler 
showed but a glimpse of the truth. Who placed the 
stone in the apple? 

As I sat that August afternoon in the porch, the 
doctrine of the council ecumenical seemed to be in the 
atmosphere, — "Vox populi vox Dei;" and then, in 
some strange, confused way, there seemed upon my ear 
the wailing lament of Faust as he listened to the drink- 
ing-songs of the students; and Cain and Lucifer, plot- 
ting to defy God, came before me; and then, in his 
turn, Napoleon, with a million lives sacrificed to his des- 
tiny or ambition, as this may be; and again, good Titus 
Fulvius, who thought it so much better to save than 
to destroy; and why it was I scarcely know, but I 
thought, with a shudder of horror, of St. Bartholomew's 
night, and recoiled on the other side when I remem- 
bered who, under the guise of a higher profession, 
burned at the stake Servetus, without pity and without 
charity ; and of many other things akin, and not akin, 
I thought, and in the confusion which came of think- 
ing I said there is no guide, and felt myself lost in ways 
which have no chart. Like the fisherman of the Bos- 
phorus, I looked on the smoke as it ascended, but could 
see no form. 



86 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

Certain religious professors, persons who feel them- 
selves converted, tell of a change, of a transformation 
which has come to them in a moment, in the twinkling 
of an eye. I believe in this ; it was, and is, what came 
to Archimedes in the bath. It was what came to 
Columbus when he broke his ^gg. It is what re- 
mained with Shakspeare until the light and heat from 
his pen fitted feudal England to appreciate the higher 
beauties of the Bible. It is that something which has 
settled in the brain of the inexplicable prodigy, blind 
Tom, and which strikes melody where educated fingers 
fail. It is what has come, and what will come, to any 
and every person who happens to be in the way of the 
stone as it falls.* 

Now, some persons think they have one of these 
stones, yet have it not, and other persons have one but 
know it not. A man, as I saw by the newspapers, 
dining at a restaurant, bit, while eating an oyster, upon 
a valuable pearl, yet threw it in disgust away, because 
he thought it only a piece of shell. 

So it is. So curious and various are men in their 
visions and perceptions, that a something, which to 

-;■:■ Virgil thus describes the Pythoness under inspiration : 

" Her color changed, her face was not the same, 
And hollow groans from her deep spirit came ; 
Her hair stood up, convulsive rage possessed 
Her trembling limbs, and heaved her laboring breast. 
Greater than human kind she seemed to look, 
And with an accent more than mortal spoke ; 
Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll, 
When all the god came rushing on her soul. 
At length her fury fell, her foaming ceased. 
And, ebbing in her soul, the god decreased." 



THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. gj 

one is possessed of priceless value, to another, has in it 
no life. 

But, to my philosopher's stone. 

As I sat, that August afternoon, in the porch, watch- 
ing the meaningless smoke, suddenly, in the very 
twinkling of an eye, did the form appear, and from 
that hour to the present one have I rested in a positive 
conviction that I have a guide, as strong and as reliable 
as force itself, — a genie greater in himself than all the 
giants. Do I ask this genie a question, he answers it 
for me. Do I put him a problem, he solves it. What 
more can a man want in a philosopher's stone ? 

And this is the stone which came to me in the smoke, 
the life truth, which I fully believe is the very vox Dei : 
*' T/ie common experience is the true experience.''^ 

Let us at once take this stone, this genie of a vase, 
this Sibylline leaf, oracle, or this nothing, as it may 
please you to call it. Let us put it to the test, — let us 
get proof of its genuineness. What shall we ask it ? 
What do you desire to know ? Suppose we ask how a 
young man, just passing from his Alma Mater into the 
great business life of the world, should act. Ask it, 
Alumnus, if the rich man's fee should overshadow the 
mite of the widow. Ask it, doctors of a clinic, if the 
hours you spend in your services have not God for a 
paymaster. Ask it, faltering humanitarian, if laugh- 
ter provoked in the palace of gladness is better than 
tears stayed in the house of mourning. Ask it, young 
gentlemen, whether, in the days of your youth, you 
shall make merry with Schiller, without counting the 
reckonings of age. You are thinking. Alumnus, of 
passing from your college to the marriage state, or, it 



S8 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

may be, your aspirations are alone for a successful prac- 
tice. Ask about these things. Ask what single-hearted- 
ness has to do with success, — what, to its uses, are 
manly integrity and uprightness. In short, ask the 
stone which I have just given you, any and everything 
you may need to know ; it will answer you right, always 
and for evermore. This, as you look into it, from the 
very nature of its constitution, you will perceive it must 
do. It is the apple of Newton, the ^gg which stands 
alone of Columbus,— it must be eliminated truth, just 
as a man will say, *' Honesty is the best policy;" and 
know it for a living truth by an utterance he never 
thinks to doubt, — the utterance of "the common ex- 
perience."* 

Shall we here leave what you may think to be ideal- 
ism, and for the pleasure of logic chopping try a pass 
with the foils of our scholarship ? 

You will tell me that my leaf cannot be Sibylline, 
because that the voice of men varies with times and 
circumstances. You recite to me of revolutions and of 
counter-revolutions. You tell of human slavery per- 
mitted, and of slavery abolished ; of bigamy a virtue, 
and bigamy a crime ; of cannibalism an instinct, and 
cannibalism a horror. And with the missile with which 
the imperious sister of John Wesley smote the soul of 
that wrestling man, when, from the agony of his doubts, 
he cried that he accepted the Roman aphorism, and 

*" Locke, Hume, the Sensational School, and the Scotch School, 
together with Gall and Aristotle, all hold to knowledge being of experi- 
ence; /.^. the vox popidi. " Experience," says Immanuel Kant, " is 
not a deceit ; human understanding has its fixed laws, and those laws 
are true." 



THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. 89 

that the vox popiili was the vox Dei, you drive through 
my logic your foil, and say, ''Yes, it cried Crucify 
him ! crucify him !" 

Now it is my turn. 

Can truth be truth to-day and error to-morrow? 
Yes ; in the sense of adaptation to requirements. As 
certainly can this be so as that the same sun is the author 
of both day and night. 

Moses was of God, was he not ? And Christ is of 
God. Moses taught an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
a tooth. And Christ enjoined that if a man take away 
one's cloak he was to give him the coat also. 

In the time of Moses, and following his dispensa- 
tion, man deemed himself absolved from sin when he 
paid in kind ; and thus, in requital for his crimes, 
he offered up bullocks and lambs, and vox populi said 
this was the Lex Dei. To feel this, and to say it, 
man must necessarily have recognized that it answered 
the requirements of the times. If life is a progress- 
ive existence, answer me, then, how this could have 
been less than what the common experience affirmed 
of it? 

Christ, the new dispensation, taught love, forbear- 
ance, humility ; taught that more to repentance and 
atonement was a contrite soul with upward aspirations, 
than was the flesh and blood of all the bullocks and 
lambs in the universe. And when, in the fullness of 
Christ's age, the perceptions of man had been educated 
to the higher plane of such life relations, — when, in 
other words, the life progressive had prepared him for 
it, there was then no hesitation in the transposition, 
but law passed at once from Moses to Christ, and this 



90 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



because the law was the common experience which 
chooses always as it finds its good. 

But how reconcile the two ? 

I do not more fully believe in my own personality 
than I believe in the laws of Moses ; and I do not more 
fully believe in the existence of the sunshine than I be- 
lieve in the laws of Christ. And yet, as these seem so 
in conflict, and the one has been supplanted by the 
other, can I logically believe they are both of truth 
and of the very highest right ? 

I believe in slavery permitted, and I believe in the 
abolition of slavery, 

I believe that bigamy may be the greatest virtue, and 
that it is the greatest crime. 

I must believe in cannibalism, even though with no 
reasoning can I explain away, or excuse, that which 
seems to me so horrible. 

These things I believe, because, in different ages, 
and under varying circumstances, the people have found 
themselves, without volition of their own, in these 
various ways ; and the common exiDerience has felt 
that these things and ways were right, and people lived 
in them, feeling no sense, or thought, of condemnation. 

To-day, all people warm their houses with coal ; a 
generation back, and everybody burned wood. 

Somewhere in the line of my reading I remember to 
have met with an essay, from the pen of that genial 
writer John Holland, on the "Unemployed Resources." 
As I recall this essay, there comes to my mind the idea I 
want. I propose to attempt to demonstrate that truth can 
be truth to-day and error to-morrow ; or, to put it in 
better phrase, that truth is a synonym for requirements. 



THE PHILOSOPHER S STONE. 



91 



I live, if you please, in a wide, unsettled country; I 
build my house where I like, and it is right. You, on 
the contrary, live in the midst of a great city; you 
build your house where you choose, and it is wrong. 
What makes the difference ? The voice of the people, 
— the common experience, — this, and nothing else. 

One has a farm on the frontiers, but has around it no 
fences ; he has no cattle, neither has he neighbors. But, 
after a time, a community grows up, and cattle, owned 
by other people, intrude on, and eat from, his corn- 
fields ; now the experience of his necessities begins 
to change, and law changes to him, as, wherein it was 
right to have no fences it is now wrong to be without 
them. 

Let us give the thought a wider range. 

In the beginning it must have happened that as man 
grew into sensibility and advanced in intelligence, or, 
in other words, as circumstances made man feel wants, 
and wants became necessities, so, for supply, he turned 
into the channel which the most naturally invited in 
the direction of the want felt. Let us, as an illustra- 
tion, take the matter of cold and heat ; these condi- 
tions, it is but fair to infer, being among the earliest 
of his considerations. Where, so naturally as in the 
forest, should man have learned the secret of combus- 
tion ? — a lightning stroke perhaps, or the friction of 
swaying branches. Received, however, as it might be, 
whether by revelation, inspiration, or accident, it mat- 
ters nothing. Man had received a great truth. Could 
it have entered into the thoughts of any one to have 
rejected this fire, or to have desired, or thought to have 



92 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



waited, for a something better ? Man had found what 
he needed, and to him a fire of wood was tlie brightest 
and greatest heat of life. And all men repeated, "This 
is the brightest and the greatest heat ;" and this it was, 
and he who doubted, chiming not in with the common 
experience, must have gone cold, even though beneath 
the surface upon which he stood lay the deepest coal- 
beds of earth. It was so, because of some great law 
felt by mankind, but understood not, having indeed 
not even a name, by reason of which the resources 
of life develop themselves in their order, and in some 
regular succession, — nothing coming ever before its 
time, and nothing coming, save as out of the smoke of 
the casket came the genie. Men scent the smoke, 
men feel the smoke, but see no form. Yet, when the 
time comes, in an instant, in the very twinkling of an 
eye, the form appears ; and he to whom it is given first 
to see it, has but to point out the substance, and, sooner 
or later, it becomes seen of all men. Who now but 
may crack the ^gg, or who but may read the law of the 
falling apple ? 

But let us see the law (now so plain) of the burning 
wood. Tree-life must have preceded man-life, for the 
reason that a soil was needed for the growing of that 
which was to be his support. So when man was born 
into the world, hecatombs of forests surrounded him. 
But, with this birth, the day of this law commenced to 
pass away, — man felled these trees and burned them ; 
forest after forest disappeared. Yet, as they burned, 
man saw only smoke : nothing saw he of any form in 
the smoke. So, generation after generation he burned 



THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. 



93 



the forests, who shall say how many? Finally, the 
balance of a law — the natural law — changed. Man 
had outgrown his ratio to tree-life, or rather, man had 
grown out of the tree-life. The tree had accomplished 
its mission in making a soil of habitat for its successor, 
— a wonderful work, of which, however, man had recog- 
nized nothing. Innocent soul ! he thought that trees 
had grown for the single purpose of being burned. 
But man felt that the place of the tree was needed by 
him, and whether he would or not, the law of his cir- 
cumstances compelled him to cut, cut ; and, as in dis- 
may he watched the smoke of his dying fire, behold, 
suddenly it condensed itself, and the genie appeared, — 
the genie greater than the giant it had succeeded, and 
the name of the genie was "stone coal." 

Do we say to ourselves, ''How silently and without 
sign did this great giant lie, till his law called him 
forth?" It was even so. Just as the great truths of the 
new dispensation assumed not before men its form of 
resistless might, neither was seen of them until its 
habitat had been made by the lower organization of a 
Mosaic period. 

For generations of generations — who shall say how 
many? — the white sails of man's ships floated over every 
sea where swam the leviathan, — the whale was the law 
and the revelation of oil, and other there was none. 
So man, out of his common experience, said, ''This is 
light." And that one, who, seeking a brighter or 
more convenient source, accepted not this common ex- 
perience, found himself in darkness. It mattered not 
that he walked over the oil streams of the Alleghanies, 



94 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



he was in darkness ; he saw not, because the time had 
not come to se^.* 

But time passed on, and man, in his development, 
outgrew his ratio to whale-life, just as before this he 
had outgrown the law of Moses and the law of the tree. 
And now — and, mark you, not until now — did he carry 
his harpoon from his ship to the hillside; and here, 
far g,way from the confusing winds and buffeting waves, 
did he strike deep, deep into the earth, and from unex- 
plored streams, from miraculous fissures, flowed forth a 
very sea itself of oil. 

Wood preceded coal, and the oil of the animal pre- 
ceded the oil of the earth. Who so illogical as to say 
wood is not of truth, because it is now replaced of coal? 
Or who would affirm that animal oil had not its ap- 
pointed work, because there has come after it that which 
man receives as a truth better suited to his needs ? 

Need we pause to make the application ? The law 
of Moses was, though we may scarcely even yet fully 
understand it, what the wood was to the soil, what the 
wood was to the coal, what the whale oil is to the rock 
oil, what, in a near future, decomposed water shall be 
to obsolete stone coal. Ah ! what is the destiny of 

* In 1820, an expedition, under Major Stephen H. Long, was sent 
to explore the country from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains. The 
object of the expedition was to inform the government of its resources, 
and in it were learned men, representing every department of science. 
" One hundred miles above Pittsburg," says the voice of this expedition, 
" near the Alleghany River, is a spring, on the surface of whose waters 
are found such quantities of bituminous oil that a person may gather 
several gallons a day." Similar oil springs are noticed as existing also 
in Kentucky and Ohio. But the genie of the oil spring uttered no 
word, and the learned men passed on and saw him not. 



THE PHILOSOPHER' S STONE. p^ 

man ? and what is to follow that which, of necessity, 
must pass away ? Common experience changes with 
that by which it finds itself influenced and controlled, 
and if it cries white to-day and black to-morrow — why, 
white and black we shall surely find it, doubt it or 
reason upon it as we may. 

But let us again rub our philosopher's stone, and ask 
it what of slavery, or what of anything else, which, 
being once its voice, is not now its voice. 

A country, says the stone, blessed with enlightenment 
and grace, with fields so extensive and fertile that well 
might they have supplied with bread many famine-over- 
run lands, finds these fields powerless for their good 
from lack of hands to till them. A sailor, our stone 
goes on to tell, threading his way through barren and 
scorched lands, had exposed to him a race lost to every 
impress of humanity save the form, a heartless people, 
cruel, devilish. As the sailor passed on his way, con- 
gratulating himself that his own lot had been so much 
the more happily cast, he came to a rude, but strong, 
pen, the odor of carnage impregnating its very logs. 
<'This," said his guide, "is where we keep prisoners 
taken in battle ; and as we are always fighting, it is 
always full, and we stick pine splints into their flesh, 
and we dance with delight as they burn, and as they 
howl and scream in their agony. And we twist them 
and drown them, and we crack the skulls of their chil- 
dren between great stones." "Why, this is perdition 
itself," said the sailor, and tears ran down his brawny 
cheeks.* 

■•• See Saucrnier's Travels in Africa. 



96 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



In his pity, to save these wretches, doomed to misery 
and destruction, the white man had no chance but in 
purchase. So lie bought the slaves, and with them 
filled his ships ; and then back — a mission unrecog- 
nized fiilfilled — he sailed to the untilled fields in the 
civilized country. For his captives he built huts, not 
palaces, but yet, houses better than in their own country 
they had ever dreamt of. Then into their hands he 
put the implements of industry ; he taught them how 
needs were most happily and comfortably supplied, 
showed them how to replace the wild meat of their flesh- 
pots with the plenty of thrift ; and having done all this, 
he looked on them in their bettered condition, and 
comparing it with the misery of the slave-pens, he said, 
''This is Paradise." 

But it was not all Paradise. 

The children of the captives had not their skulls 
cracked between stones, but the sailor felt it not wrong 
to scatter them among his neighbors, neither, having 
bought them with a price, was he liberal enough to say, 
You are free ; but he kept them in bondage, and they 
toiled for him, — yet toiled at the same time for them- 
selves. Just, indeed, as labor always has toiled for 
capital, or, more correctly speaking, as labor finds its 
best good in a copartnership with capital, as hands find 
themselves most profitable when directed by a head, most 
helpless when they depend alone upon their own sinews. 

But the slaves learned the ways of the intelligence 
which controlled them, — from the barren fields grew 
out the fruits of knowledge, the ignorant and beastly 
became the refined and human, the animal of the blood- 
pen became the man of Christ's religion. 



THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. gy 

Now, yet not until now, changed the vox Dei, as ex- 
pressed in the vox populi. Gradually over the land 
went a voice, so gradually extended that man compre- 
hended not, for a long time, what sound it was ; then, 
as a whirlwind, it culminated, and slaves and master 
were, in a moment, separated. The whirlwind was the 
law of development and progressive evolution. The 
sacrifice of life in the Rebellion was simply a result of 
man's ignorance ; he saw not the irresistible law against 
which he contended. Before this law is there nothing 
that may not yield. 

Back to the land of the slave-pens has gone, and will 
go, the prisoner saved by the sailor ; but with him he 
takes a something he brought not. Where stood the 
pen, he has built, and shall build, a Liberia, and his city 
is one set upon a hill, and from it the darkest places of 
Africa are to be illuminated, and the sunshine of 
liberty, freedom, and light, which it gives forth, shall 
make barren hills and desolate hearts bloom and blossom 
as the rose, and Africa's people shall see, in the future, 
and shall understand, with amazement, the workings 
of the wondrous law which disenthralled them. 

The price paid — think — was a very small one, and it 
Avas as the seed, which, to produce fruit, must itself be 
cast into the earth and perish. 

* * * ''Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the 
earth." No voice but the first speech has ever spoken 
on this subject over the wide, unoccupied lands of Amer- 
ica. From England, however, and the over-populated 
cities of France rises a first faint whisper, — the physicist 
alone here has heard the voice, — long may it be before 

7 



98 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

heed is claimed for it in the ears of the people. Yet 
has the voice modified itself thus much to the world 
that the speech to the patriarchs, which was the enjoin- 
ing of bigamy, now discountenances, to this extent at 
least, over-production. An American writer may not, 
however, give even thought to this subject ; but I con- 
demn not my English brother, who seems to be having 
it forced upon him. 

Let me close these reflections with the expression 
of the Hindoos: "The great triad has, at different 
times, become incarnate in different forms and in 
different countries, to the inhabitants of which it has 
given different laws and instructions, suitable to their 
respective climates and circumstances. Thus it is ihat 
religions differ, each being suited, and suiting itself, to 
requirements, — the goodness of Deity naturally allowing 
many roads to the same end." 



TO-DAY. 

" 1\ /T ^^^ ^^^^ light." This was the message, to the 
JLVX world, of George Fox, the founder of the 
society called ''Friends." The light of the world is 
the experience thereof; the highest good is to walk 
therein.* 

Never, in any age, has there shone over the common 
intelligence a broader sheen than to-day is beaming on 
the minds of men. The light which seemed heretofore 
to have glimmered here and there for the few, is now 
falling upon all people ; everybody is thinking, every- 
body is on the road of progress. To-day is as a morn- 
ing, with the sunlight awakening the drowsy ; mankind 
are as sleepers aroused. The people stand alert, watch- 
ing the growing light and looking towards the meridian. 
What next? is the expectation. Prejudices, like marsh 
mists before advancing morning, are disappearing. 
The injunction of the Quaker has become the watch- 
Avord of science. 

It has come most powerfully to strike the intelligence 
of the age, that in man's relation to, and worship of, 
God, he has been exhibiting little else than selfishness; 
his prayers have been "give," "give," and his wor- 
ship, for a prize not otherwise to be obtained. Heaven, 

* " Error does not arise from the senses being false media, but from 
the wrong interpretations we put on their testimony." — Aristotle. 

(99) 



loo ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

the object of his adoration, has been as a something 
having little connection with the present, being a 
country geographically afar off, and only to be reached 
in some distant future. Where has ascended one thank- 
offering for the good which "covers man as with a 
garment," a thousand petitions have been clogged 
about it. From night until morning, and from morn- 
ing until night, it has not been much but weary com- 
plainings, lamentations, and cravings. 

This, if God was a giver as man gives, might not be 
at least without judgment in us, for then should we hope 
to weary Him into compliance ; and there are not too 
many in his world who would be ashamed of such 
littleness and meanness. 

But God gives not as man gives. True, a sparrow 
may not fall without notice, no more than may a planet 
combust ; but no special decree or observation recog- 
nizes either. A sparrow falls in law as shall a world 
disappear. But this, instead of being for us to regret, 
should prove rather our joy, and, indeed, a fullness of 
satisfaction ; and will so prove when a profounder 
knowledge of the Creator shall give a profounder faith; 
for we shall come clearly and fully to see our duty, and, 
walking therein, shall arrive at that confidence which 
trusts, even though it seems that He "destroy us." We 
shall have learned that "what is, is best." 

Law, then, is the government of the world and of 
all things therein contained ; and this law, like unto 
man's law, is a studyable code. To read and to know 
the law, is the wisdom of life. 

The yet too common cry that the present is an age 
of skepticism, is only the lingerings of the voice that 



TO- DA Y. loi 

goes ever before truth. The age, rather, is that of inves- 
tigation and research, not infidelity, except, indeed, 
that to be infidel is to advance to higher and greater 
thoughts. Men have ceased to be satisfied with that 
acquaintance with their Creator which has held Him at 
such an immeasurable distance, — they are wanting to 
get closer, they would lessen, or annihilate, the space 
of separation, as, with steam and electricity, they have 
discovered that the spaces of earth are to be anni- 
hilated, and in so great an undertaking they are most 
happily succeeding, and the success is coming from 
'' minding the light." 

The scientists of the day, it will readily be per- 
ceived, have not yet acquired the skill to read fully the 
hieroglyphics themselves are unearthing ; but they con- 
tinue not the less vigorously to work, and the cipher, 
which is to prove the key to the whole, may not forever 
elude the search. In this, then, their aspect of to-day, 
they may well be compared with the apostles of Christ, 
who, reading the Saviour daily, recognized not the 
kingdom He represented. 

Surely it cannot but be that the day is not far distant 
when the theologian and scientist shall join efforts. 
Thus is it to be that man is the more quickly to arrive 
at the grace in store for him. Whom men have served 
alone in the faith, Him is the scientist to declare in 
fact; then shall exist the halo which is to enable the 
very blind to see. 

Science and truth are synonyms, and synonyms may 
not belie each other. If, in the developments daily 
being made by the learned men of the age, there seems 
to be any conflict with doctrines of the Bible, the fault 



I02 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

resides, not certainly in that book of truths, neither, as 
I conceive, is it in science ; but a future will exhibit 
that it is to be searched for in a still-enveloping 
ignorance, which permits not men to make a recon- 
ciliation of even parallel things. 1 will be excused in 
suggesting that, for my own part, my reading and my 
reflections have so entirely satisfied me of this, that I 
cannot but express regret at seeing separated workers, 
who, in all reason and common sense, should be holding 
to the same end of the rope. 

As exhibiting the mutual relations which naturally 
exist — so fas as common good is concerned — between 
theology and materialism, I may not but instance an 
illustration exhibited in a work lately published by 
the learned President of Princeton College, entitled 
" Christianity and Positivism." In reading this author 
one recognizes a master, not accepting him alone in 
faith, but impressed with the conviction that always 
does he know, fully and widely, just what he is writing 
about, — a virtue not by any means possessed by all 
his fellows, as witness some of the Boston ''Lectures 
on Christianity and Skepticism." It is a fact, a very 
unfortunate one, that most men of reputation and parts 
are one-sided, — this, indeed, being the secret of their 
prominence. Not more certainly does this apply to 
the theologian than to the scientist. While by the 
world a man may be esteemed learned because of that 
which it hears from him, yet it may, indeed, very 
well be that he knows little aside from his specialty 
and is entirely incompetent to the reconciliation of his 
own with other truths. In the wider sense, then, of 
"learned" do I offer my respect to our Scotch visitor. 



TO-DAY. 103 

Dr. McCosh, it seems to me, has read everything, and 
has also well digested the mass; and from this learning 
and his ability to appreciate concurring facts, he makes 
it felt that he has found the treasure which casteth out 
fear. I will not compare this man with Darwin, with 
Huxley, Herbert Spencer, or Maudsley, but I may not 
hesitate to say that he is not of less breadth of outlook 
than either of them, — certainly he makes it recognized 
that he has walked the paths, both of theology and 
science, to the point at which they are found to run 
together and make a common road ; we see him in this 
road, and feel it to be the true one. 

The progressiveness of man's appreciation of his re- 
lations to his Maker, and to nature, may be very well 
illustrated in an observation of him in connection with 
his worship ; that is, that in proportion to his intelli- 
gence does he grow out of forms and ceremonies. 

The wisdom of the Romish Church, in its adoption 
of signs and symbols, is placed beyond dispute when a 
momentary consideration is given to the material com- 
posing it. It will be instantly admitted, I presume, 
that the mass of the Roman Catholic world are not of 
that education of which is begotten the reflective cast 
of the Quaker mind, — taking this sect as the other ex- 
treme, — and in just so far as these people are behind the 
Quakers in just such proportion must their requirements 
differ. Confession, to a Friend, would justly be a bur- 
lesque; to an illiterate man, I can conceive of it being 
his salvation, or, if not this, I may imagine, at any rate, 
nothing better calculated to keep him from offense. 
The ceremonials, the garniture of the altar and of the 
priests, — these appeal to the eye, and have, from the 



I04 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

beginning, been the instruments of impression on simple 
minds. A man whose attention could not otherwise 
be interested is thus attracted and taught. Pictures, 
images, signs, relics, — these are to the man-child what 
they are to the infant-child, — are necessities of worship, 
and will, no doubt, long continue to be. But, if men 
grow, these things may not last ; people naturally grow 
out of them, cannot help but grow out of them, — 
just as we grow out of quack doctors, grow out of 
lawyers, learn too much to accept '• ' image and sign 
for essence." It is not an argument. against this that 
the Romanist, when educated, still holds to his ceremo- 
nials. There are many reasons why these should be 
retained by him, not the least of which is the impolicy 
of his losing influence and command over a mass of 
material not otherwise restrainable, and which com- 
mand the general good may pray that he retain as long 
as possible. Or, again, it takes a wide knowledge to 
educate a man out of his prejudices. Or, still again, 
one may very justly ask if other work is given this 
people save this. To this latter view I would myself 
rather incline. It seems most in accordance with life 
relations; to the tortoise is given the earth, to the 
eagle, both earth and sky. I can imagine, however, 
nothing but the eventual passing away of all ceremonial 
observances ; and on such a principle, it seems to me a 
necessity of nature as it grows into spirituality, that in 
some distant future all people will be found gathering 
in the silent waitings of the Quaker form of worship. 
I satisfy myself of this by observing that as a man be- 
comes reflective and unselfish, he inclines to simplicity 
and retirement. Tinsel and gloss no longer allure or 



TO-DA V. 



105 



attract him, fine churches are a reflection upon his 
charity, because he has come to a recognition of the 
fact that to Him who is beauty itself, the abortions of 
men can be no compliment. I will not, of course, be es- 
teemed as reflecting particularly on the Romish Church. 
I am speaking only to a principle. I am not at all 
adverse to the confession that I hold creeds and profes- 
sions as of such little import that to me they seem like 
the playthings with which children amuse themselves. I 
only assert a belief, founded on the relation of things, 
that knowledge and ceremonials cannot coexist. 

So, as man grows out of ceremonials does he grow 
also out of prejudices. I am not to affirm that an 
educatd man is without this fault, but I may assert that 
a learned man is. There is a marked distinction be- 
tween the two. An educated man, feeling he knows 
much, may possibly be vain. A learned man, recog- 
nizing that he knows nothing, must be humble. I 
never knew a truly learned man who was not simple- 
hearted, and who found not his highest pleasure in 
things deemed by the world of little consequence.* 

The discussions of the age, no matter what the range 
or who the authority, are groupable under two heads — 
Naturalism and Christianity. The first may consider 
man alone from the aspect of an organized force of 
nature. This is the fullest application of its range. 
The second has to deal with the soul-life of man, and 
this is that life of which the body is nothing more 

*"So much learning," said Atterbury, speaking of Berkeley, the 
famous bishop of Cloyne, " so much knowledge, so much innocence^ 
and so much humility, I did not think had been the portion of any 
but angels till I saw this gentleman." 



]o6 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

than the temple. Naturalism is a science by and in 
itself. Soulism is a something by and in itself. The 
relations of the two have no closer identity than the 
chariot horses of the Phaedrus ; it is true enough both 
are in the same harness, but yet are they separable, and 
sooner or later must be seen of all men so to be. 

A fault of the age seems to be the inclination to the 
speedy seeking of conclusions ; perhaps, indeed, it will 
be found to be that this is the greatest drawback against 
which learning has to contend. '' When I was a young 
man," said an eminent practitioner of medicine, "I 
had twenty remedies for every disease, but now that I 
am an old man I have scarcely one remedy for twenty 
diseases." ''The man should be hanged without a 
doubt," said a juror, who had listened to one side of 
the testimony. "The other man should be hanged," 
he said, when the opposite side had been heard. Now, 
how naturalism can contend with soulism is simply 
inconceivable. A soul is only of the material part, 
as is a man of the house in which he has taken up 
his residence. And a body is not to the real and 
true life of a man of more signification than his 
house.* Often have I thought of this separability 
of existence as I have meditated over the bodies and 
parts of bodies one finds scattered through every part 

* It must be that there is much one does not comprehend, but the 
known may give faith in the reasonable unknown. What is called 
centrifugal force, or the opponent in nature to gravitation, is simply a 
name having in it no scientific meaning ; but that there is a something 
that harmonizes the relation of the planets no one may doubt. And 
this something, this law, whatever it is, will be found quite as simple of 
recognition as gravitation ; indeed, it may very well be that it is gravita- 
tion. 



TO-DA V. 



107 



of a dissecting-room. Kick a dried leg, as you find 
it covered with dust in some overlooked corner: it 
makes no complaint at the insult ; it rolls away, as 
does the bone you kick after 'it. Stick the scalpel 
deep into the brain from which you have just removed 
the calvarium : there is no wincing ; pound the mass 
in a mortar, and as the ashman comes, mix it with 
the dirt he carries, and, as he goes oif, wonder if any- 
body may tell the difference between dust and dust. 
Open the eyelids of the body that lies upon the marble 
table : how dead and cold and meaningless is the orb ! 
" Surely," you think, " this did never smile, nor love, 
nor sparkle." No, it did not; but the soul that used 
it did. Yorick's skull was not Yorick. Open the 
dead jaw, and with tenaculum pull forward the flabby 
tongue fallen so far back into the throat. Is this the 
organ which whispered the honeyed words of Claude, or 
screamed the battle-cry of a crusading Peter ? No, it 
is simply a piece of worn-out machinery, thrown away 
because no longer needed ; particle by particle you may 
cut this up, searching for its secret, but you search in 
vain ; the power and the secret have left it. Then you 
say, " What is a body that I should be mindful of it?" 
and you leave that room never again to confound body 
and soul. Yet, for all, how wonderful is the machine ; 
how complex ! Twenty years, perhaps, you have studied 
it, and still do not know it all. If the materialistic, in 
even so limited a portion of the territory, is thus incom- 
prehensible, who shall doubt, because that he cannot 
compass the immaterial ? An atheist is simply a fool, 
and deserves not to be considered. 

Can a man understand and analyze his soul, — his real 



Io8 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

life? I have never yet met the man who understood 
fully the body, — never one. But I know close students 
of the mortal part, and of all the natural sciences, and 
these are students in the laboratory of God, and are 
the men who come the nearest in the contemplative 
view of the incomprehensible. From these, people are 
learning of God's attributes. 

But the fault of the materialist is that in too many 
instances he lacks width to read the writings he himself 
exposes; yet this is only manlike. The microsco 
pist, for example, is very apt to fall into the conviction 
that the only things to be seen are such as pass over 
the field of his glass. I knew a philosopher of this 
class, who, on one occasion, got his head broken by the 
overtoppling of a crazy book-case, which an ordinary 
person might have seen the unsafety of, and yet, at the 
moment of the accident, he had just developed among 
the last lines on Nobert's test, — certainly al)out the most 
unseeable thing in science. This lack of outlook is a 
fault of the materialist, but, as before implied, it is cer- 
tainly not less the fault of the theologian.* Both, 



* Let me shelter this assertion where few may venture to criticise it. 
" Chasrephon, my friend," says Socrates, " being at Delphi, ventured to 
inquire of the oracle who was the wisest man, and in answer was told 
that none were wiser than Socrates. Then I reasoned with myself: 
What does the god mean ? What is the enigma ? For I am not con- 
scious that I am wise, either much or little. . . . Aftei-wards, with 
considerable difficulty, I had recourse to the following method of 
searching out his meaning. I went to the politician, the greatest of 
the day. I questioned him, but found he was only wise in the opin- 
ions of others and in his own, but not really so. I thereupon endeavored 
to show him that he fancied himself to be wise, but was not truly so ; 
for my pains, I became odious, both to him and many others who were 



TO-DAY. 109 

however, are broadening to a wider horizon ; rapidly 
is the sense of the distinction between body and soul, 
the mortal and the immortal part, extending among 
scientists. If Darwin believes in, and demonstrates, 
a progressive development, it brings us simply to the 
creation through natural laws (which would be nothing 
different from a special creation to the same end) of a 
body or organism capable of receiving a soul as a 
tenant, just as a father might refuse to put a son into 
any house but one specially built for him. Or if Mr. 
Huxley pleases to place protoplasm as the basal element 
of life, wherein does he disprove, or even affect to dis- 
prove, the influence of the original cause, which, out 
of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, makes pro- 
toplasm ? Protoplasm is not life ; the yelk of an ^gg 
is not life, nor still is it the albumen ; yet are both 
elements of life. The germinal spot even is not the 
entity, though from this we find form to start. The 
aphorism of Virchow, " Omnis cellula e celkila," yet 
explains nothing of the mystery ; neither, as I under- 
present. When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser 
than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great or 
good ; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows no- 
thing ; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. 
In this trifling particular, then, I appear to l3c wiser thin he. 

" I went to the artisans, for I was conscious to myself that I knew 
scarcely anything, but I was sure I should find them possessed of much 
beautiful knowledge. And in this I was not deceived, for they knew 
things which I did not, and in this respect they were wiser thdii . 
Bat, O Athenians, even the best workman appeared to me to have 
fallen into the same error as the poets, for each, because he excelled 
in the practice of his art, thought that he was very wise in other most 
important matters, and this mistake of theirs obscured the wisdom that 
they really possessed." 



no ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN: 

Stand it, does the physicist attempt to argue outside of 
the materialistic aspect of the question of life. Whence 
came the original cell is certainly a question not foreign 
to the thoughts of the naturalist; or, if a very common 
sense had not suggested this, assuredly the refutation 
of M. Pouchet's experiments by Pasteur would have 
been the sufficient asking of it. Does Comte, or his 
successor, Herbert Spencer, ascend to a first cause ? 
On the contrary, with Mr. Mill, with Professor Bain, 
and Mr. Grote, they assume that man may study only 
phenomena.'^ But are phenomena causes? Is a flash 
of lightning or a peal of thunder a cause ? Who tells, or 
even attempts to tell, anything of either when he de- 
scribes it as a phenomenon ? When Mr. Mill writes 
of ideas as generated from sensations, and " feelings 
springing up in an unknown way by means of this as- 
sociation of things," does he tell, or attempt to tell, 
anything of action in the abstract? Nothing of the 
kind; certainly nothing so far as the exhibit of a cause 
is concerned. I have often myself described to large 
classes the phenomena of nerve force, but I never 
dreamed of having attempted to explain aught save 
the merest mechanism of the matter. And if it should 

"•■• The materialistic discusses not God, but approaches Him through 
that it may discuss. "The conditionally limited," says Sir William 
Hamilton, " is the only possible object of knowledge and of positive 
thought ; thought necessarily supposes conditions. To think is to con- 
dition, and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possi- 
bility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip his shadow, 
nor, by a more appropriate simile, the eagle outsoar the atmosphere in 
which he floats, and by which alone he may be supported, so the mind 
cannot transcend that sphere of limitation, within and through which 
exclusively the possibility of thought is realized." 



TO- DA Y. Ill 

have been that one followed me through the week of 
lectures it takes for such a demonstration, he must 
always have found at the close that we had simply 
reviewed a machine ; of the force using this machine, 
— the soul, he must have left the lecture-room to com- 
mune with, and think of a something higher than 
matter, as did the lecturer. 

The doctrine of Dr. Maudsley, of the non-unity of the 
soul (see his "Gulstonian Lectures delivered before the 
Royal College of Physicians of London"), places him 
in a category in which he seems to lack that solid basis 
of support possessed by nearly all other materialistic 
co-workers. I say this in all respect for the learning 
exhibited by the gentleman. What Dr. Maudsley says 
of the soul seems precisely analogous to saying that 
it is ''an engine which drags a train," having at the 
moment in one's mind no recognition of the steam 
which is the force of the engine. One may only express 
surprise that so fallible and loose an assertion could 
have gained a moment's reputation for profundity. 
"The soul," says Dr. M., "is an unity only by the 
combination and co-operation of the brain-cells, and it 
shifts moment by moment, and is dissolved by the dis- 
solution of these cells." Again I find myself unable to 
comprehend why the notoriety of this view (let it be 
good or ill as it may) attaches at all to Dr. Maudsley, 
as in the "Rapports du Physique et du Morale de 
I'Homme," of Cabanis, 1 find the same idea.* 

-■• The theories of Dr. Maudsley (see " Mind and Body") were ad- 
vanced, one hundred and twenty odd years ago, by Pierre Cabanis. 

" By an unfortunate phrase, Cabanis gave his antagonists an advan- 
tage, and impeded the progress of his own views. He was understood 



112 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

The premature deductions of men may be viewed as 
clouds shifting over the face of the sunlight. Indeed, 
it may be that these are necessary to an ability to look 
at the light at all, as is the atmosphere with its fogs to 
the looking at the sun, We certainly could not see 
the sun half as truly as we do without some interposed 
veil. Try the experiment on any cloudless summer 

to say that the brain secretes thoughts as the Hver secretes bile. He 
said nothing of the kind, but his language lent itself easily to the mis- 
conception ; and the ridicule and disgust which assailed it seriously 
damaged the dignity of the physiological method. This is what he 
did say : ' Pour se faire une idee juste des operations dont resulte la 
pensee, il faut considerer le cerveau comme un organe particulier des- 
tine specialement a la produire.' Had he stopped here," suggests the 
author from whom I quote, " few would have seen anything to cavil at, 
but he added, ' de meme que I'estomac et les intestins a operer la 
digestion, le foie a filtrer la bile.' This is really saying nothing different 
from the hypothesis of Maudsley, ' that thought is a function of the 
brain.' " 

The fallacy of Dr. Maudsley, as it strikes me, after a most critical 
reading of him, lies, to express it mechanically, in his not distinguishing 
between the power and the machine, between the steam of the engine, 
which is a something in itself, and the engine, which is a something in 
itself. In the summing up in his third lecture, he repudiates the aphor- 
ism of Sir William Hamilton : 

" On earth there is nothing great but man, 
In man there is nothing great but mind." 

But he has done it on such insufficient grounds (in the arguments of 
his book) that they have failed to impress me to the slightest extent. 
In a physiologico-mechanical expression his whole argument of the 
unity of body and mind is thus statable : "There can be in itself no 
such an independent force as steam, because, unless the engine is per- 
fect, steam is not found able to drag a train, propel the steamship, or 
drive the wheels of a factory." This fallacy, it seems to me, certainly 
must strike any one whose knowledge of physiology will enable him 
to analyze Dr. Maudsley. 



TO-DAY. 1x3 

day, — it is at such a time that the orb is certainly most 
exposed ; yet, we find that now we may not see it at all. 
But the light is to be seen through clouds, even as we 
do darken a glass that we may trace the sun's disk. 
And a suggestion, be it erroneous or true, provokes 
thought, through which thought, or out of which, comes, 
sooner or later, a disproof, or verification.* 

* " Mind," says Dr. Maudsley, "can only be studied with any pros- 
pect of advantage by the physiological method." Dr. Charles Elam, 
in his " Problems." criticising Dr. Maudsley and Huxley, says, " It is 
true that for purposes of discussion, and in a physiological point of view, 
the terms mind (soul) and brain may be used synonymously. But it 
appears to us a matter too much involving the reality, or otherwise, of 
our hopes of immortality, not to compel the entering of our formal pro- 
test against the doctrine. The brain, we know, is material ; the mind 
is, we conceive, immaterial. Yet, as we know, and can know, nothing 
abstractly of mind apa»t from its manifestations through its mc^terial 
organ, it is convenient occasionally to use these as convertible terms, 
especially when concerned with laws of action, which appear to be 
connected with, if not dependent upon, material changes. Yet, no- 
thing can be more certain than this, that however dependent mind 
may be for its manifestations upon a material organ, it is essentially 
different in its nature. Were there no presumptive evidence of this 
from the phenomena of memory, imagination, etc., it would be supplied 
by the frequent instances of the persistent integrity of the mind amid 
the utter decay of the bodily organs." "My friends," said Anquetil, 
when his approaching death was announced to him by his physicians, 
" you behold a man dying, full of life." On this expression M. Lordet 
quotes Dr. Elam's remark : " It is, indeed, an evidence of the duplicity 
of the dynamism in one and the same individual ; a proof of the union 
of two active causes simultaneously created, hitherto inseparable, and 
the survivor of which is the biographer of the other." 

What the physicist or philosopher may say is ever to be received in 
comparison with other things. The man who reads extensively, or thinks 
much, will always feel his fallibility, and be prepared with self-excuse 
in denying himself. " In a living life," says Mr. George Henry Lewis, 
in his chapter on the Writings of Plato, "a man's opinions undergo 

8 



114 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



''In pure light," says Hegel, ''that is, light without 
color or shadow, we should be totally unable to see 
anything. Absolute clearness is therefore identical with 
absolute obscurity, — with its negation, in fact ; but 
neither clearness nor obscurity is complete alone. By 
uniting them we have clearness mingled with obscu 
rity ; that is to say, we have light, properly so called." 

Suggestive is this, at least. 

Scientific men are always suggestive, or, if not this, 
at least through them comes the unearthing of the 
truths of life. To appreciate what these have done is 
only to reflect upon all things which man recognizes as 
good, and if to best know one is to know his work, 
then has the scientist shown the people more of God 
than has even the theologian. 

The scientist stands to the theologian (as will be seen, 
I conceive, when the former is properly known by the 
latter) as English intelligence and light has recognized 
in the healing art, the relationship of a specialist to a 
general practitioner. In America, for example, the 
common practitioner is expected to be competent to 
every emergency, and whether a patient should have 
fractured a rib, injured an eye, or been attacked by a 
passing epidemic, the one mind is the common direc- 
tory. In England, on the contrary, certain individuals 
concentrate the strength and force of lifetime observa- 
tions in special investigations, and because of such 
concentration, become proficients. When, on any 

many modifications." Plato found himself compelled to contradict 
himself continually. " Plato," says Cicero, "would affirm nothing, but 
after producing many arguments and examining a question on every 
side, would leave it undetermined." 



ro-DA V. 



115 



point, obscurity exists, one of these scientists, whose 
forte may be the point under dispute, is called to shed 
his light upon it ; and thus the dark place becomes 
illumined, and is safely passed over. In this country, 
the people know very little about such a good, and so 
by not knowing of the light, they are too frequently 
mired. 

Aside from science, is other light to-day shining? 

Under the pall of war, entirely concealed from many 
eyes, lies the most heavenly of God's gifts to earth, — 
peace. When this pall shall be torn, how shall all 
people rejoice in the light which is yet so dim ! 

How black must be the darkness of that man who is 
not prepared to give his blessing and his word of cheer 
to the peace apostles ! To utter my own sense of this 
movement I have no sufficient words. It is a breaking 
light which has only so far risen as to touch a peak 
here and there of the high spots of human nature, 
but it is a light which shall follow the sun, and every 
dark nature, and every dark place, shall be warmed and 
freshened by the glorious rays. Soon, very soon, I 
trust, will the display and ostentation of war stand forth 
in its proper apparel ; then shall reputation no longer 
be associated with rapine and cruelty, but men will 
open their hearts in a sudden wonder that not before 
should they have seen that the difference between mili- 
tary fame and all that is best to be avoided was not in 
fact but in estimation. No one may doubt but in that 
profession are to be found men of unexceptionable 
character. But one may wonder at it, — wonder, as 
much as one finds himself surprised at the association 



ii6 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN: 

of the notoriously incompetent with the grand profes- 
sion of politics. It will be a happy day for the world 
when the learned and nobly-inclined gentlemen in the 
one profession, shall displace the many unlearned and 
ignoble disgracing the other. 

The principle of arbitration, another of the humane 
characteristics of the Society of Friends, exhibits in 
itself the advance ground occupied by this people. Who 
ever saw two true Quakers contend in a court of law ? 
Who has seen a real Friend take up the sword ?* Think, 
for a moment, what the result would be, if all people 
were governed by these 'principles; we will not con- 
sider the treasure saved, but we may ponder over the 
evil avoided and the good secured. 

The light — the proper light — I do not believe is, 
anywhere upon this earth, to be more fully seen than in 
the living of Friends. I write this, having myself 
searched for it in many places, and having seen and 
known every class and condition of society. There is 
never, among this people, want, for there is always fru- 
gality; there is never contention, for there is always 
agreement ; there is never unrest, for there is always 
quiet. 

But it is answered, that with this people is diversity 
of doctrine. 

*■ It was greatly to the loss of the influence of the Society of Friends 
that, during the late war, so many of its young people, uninfluenced by 
the charges and warnings of their elders, forgot the principles they 
served and impiously took upon their weak selves the work which, in 
its own right time, would have been wrought to its proper end. This, 
I, trust, all now see. 



TO-DA V. 



117 



This I said one day to my daughter, whom, of al! 
things, I most desire to see grow into the dignity and 
simplicity of a Quaker maiden : 

Friends, my daughter, I said, are thinking people, 
and being of wide reading and contemplative habits, 
much free discussion necessarily exists amongst them. 
It is with Friends as with other people, perfect knowl- 
edge and judgment do not exist with them ; conse- 
quently in their meetings much may be heard that is 
not food for all to whom the hearing comes ; but this 
argues not that what is given is not food, no more than 
would it be just to say of meat that it is not food when 
offered to an infant. In a Friends' meeting are large 
numbers to feed, and of that which is set before the 
many, the wise man or woman takes what he or she 
finds subservient to nutrition, and takes nothing more. 
In this, in which the Society is educated, it derives its 
analogy from the physical body. The body of a man 
is made up of various members, — bones, muscles, nerves, 
arteries, veins, lymphatics, and a hundred other parts. 
Poured upon these members in bulk, as we might ex- 
press ourselves, is blood, the fluid holding the pabulum 
for all of them ; that which is life to the one part is not 
nutrition to the other, — indeed, is positive poison. But 
the bone takes not the pabulum of the muscle, nor the 
muscle the food of the bone, but each takes that which 
meets its own requirements, and lets go by it without 
concern that which is foreign to its nature. So, when 
in Friends' meeting diverse doctrines are preached, 
the simple or the learned, the Spiritualist or the Ma- 
terialist, the Trinitarian or Unitarian takes of that 
which feeds him, — and takes of that alone. 



Ii8 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. ■ 

''Image and sign are not the essence." God is God, 
and beside Him there is none other; from Him all things 
emanate, towards Him all things gravitate. God is God. 

The world, happily, has never been without ''the 
light." On some — on many — altars it is always kept 
beacon bright; grand men have lived, and grand men 
will, no doubt, live^ who, "minding the light," shine 
out as examples to their fellow-men. Poor and rich, 
high and low, learned and unlearned. Christian and 
heathen, — who mind the light, profit alike from it. 
Never was a man so atheistical that he might not recog- 
nize the flame, never a man so much a doubter that he 
felt not truth. 

" With me," says Socrates, "has always been a guide 
which has not failed to direct me, even in the most 
simple of my outgoings and incomings. To-day, when 
I left my house to come into this court which has con- 
demned me to my death, it warned me not against the 
coming : thus may I be sure that my dying shall profit 
more than my living." The familiar spirit of Socrates 
was relied on ever as the director of his actions. 
" Give thy son no teacher," spoke the oracle to Sophro- 
niscus, the fiither of the philosopher, "for within him 
is a voice better than a thousand instructors." 

Pascal, with his amulet, is only perhaps an example 
of a nature in which the flame of the inner light burned 
with extraordinary brightness. Certain it is that from 
the hour of his greatest spiritual exaltation on a Novem- 
ber night in 1654, he ever after manifested no interest 
in earthly affairs, save to endeavor to cast his light 
along the pathway of his fellow-men, and to live in 
whnt he deemed the true life. 



LIVING. 

AFTER all, the odd hours of a man's life consti- 
tute his true life ; out of harness and out of the 
shop, back he goes at once to the rut of his wander- 
ings and his thinkings; and if you would see him as he 
is, in truth and nature, it is in the rut you are to seek 
him. 

A grave man playing at skittles, and a learned man 
at leap-frog, are anything but sorry sights. A sorry 
sight, however, it is when the rut gets never into the 
sunshine. " Out to grass," as Kaye has it, is a happy 
leading of the rut. Donald Mitchell is to me an in- 
viting ray, as, with Ik Marvel, he crosses his legs and 
dreams his dreams before his crackling wood-fire; and 
Horace Greeley, as he discourses about the things of 
the field, and gets out of Printing-House Square, is 
made the fuller man that it is seen he is more than a 
politician. Beecher, counting the bushels of his corn- 
crop, or with wide-soled boots hoeing potatoes, is not 
less the man that one desires to know than when, in 
Plymouth Chapel, he pours out the libations of his 
bright thoughts. Out of harness is glorious, for whether 
one dreams dreams stretched full length in some shady 
seacoast spot, or dreams his dreams in the librar)- 
arm-chair, the relief amounts to the same sense of 
exhilaration. 

We have discoursed somewhat of the thoughts of the 

("9) 



I20 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

age. We will not belie the intentions of our book, of 
the odd thoughts of our odd hours, if we spend a re- 
flection upon a fault of the age — overworking. 

"It is a blessed thought all through the long work- 
day months of the early part of the year," says the 
author of "Essays of an Optimist," "that, if we only 
live long enough, we must drift into August. For with 
August comes the holiday. There is a lull in the mighty 
clatter of the machinery of life ; the great wheels are 
still, or they gyrate slowly and noiselessly. How it 
happens it is hard to say (and the harder the more you 
think about it, for man's wants and man's passions, 
which make work, are never still), but the autumnal 
sabbath comes round as surely as the shorter days and 
the yellower leaves ; and from the great heart of the 
metropolis we go in search of a cheerier life and a 
fresher atmosphere. ' ' 

There seems simply no need of so much production 
as men are making. A man works as if he worked for 
many others, and not at all for himself. This is the 
explanation of the absence of all but the autumnal 
holiday : " Luxuries accumulate and men decay." The 
need of the much arises from the artificiality of living, 
and the much engenders and breeds the unsatisfiable. 
"Appetite," says Seneca, "hath revolted from nature, 
which continually inciteth itself, and increases with the 
ages, helping vice by wit. First it began to desire 
superfluous, then contrary, things ; last of all, it sold 
the mind to the body, and commanded it to serve the 
lusts thereof. All the arts wherewith the city is con- 
tinually set at work, and maketh such a stir, do center 
in the affairs of the body, to which all things were 



LIVING. 121 

once performed as to a servant, but now are provided 
as for a lord." 

An honest old German, smoking his pipe upon his 
stoop, thus discoursed to one who asked him of the 
rich men of his neighborhood: "That is our wealth- 
iest man," said he, pointing to one who lived least 
imposing of his neighbors ; 'Mie is worth ten thousand 
dollars ; all the others have more than a hundred thou- 
sand." Upon surprise being expressed that a man of 
ten thousand was richer than he who multiplies him 
ten times, *'In this country," he said, '^a man with 
ten thousand dollars has all that his true necessities 
demand : the remainder of his possessions, whatever 
they may be, are not of real use, so all over ten thou- 
sand only tend to fret him and cause him anxiety." 
It must be, then, that, as the object of wealth is to 
make one's self comfortable, the man of fewest cares is 
the richest. We will say, at least in the abstract, this 
discourser was a philosopher. 

"It is the property of God to need nothing," said 
Socrates, " and they that need, and are contented with 
least, come nearest to God." Antisthenes, the Athe- 
nian, the founder of the sect called Cynics, said, 
"Those who have once learned the way to temperance 
and virtue, let them not addict themselves again to 
corporeal delicacies and false wants, for these dull the 
mind and divert and hinder from noble living." " You 
see," said Xenocrates, as he treated the ambassadors 
of Alexander with the temperate and spare things of 
his table, " I have no need for your master's bounty 
that I am so well pleased with this." Artaxerxes 
Mnemon was reduced on one occasion to dine on bar- 



122 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

ley-bread and dried figs, and drink water: "What 
pleasure/' said he, "have I lost till now, through my 
delicacies and excesses !" 

Goldsmith — poor Goldsmith! — was not a philoso- 
pher, but he felt out truths, and saw not unfrequently 
farther than many who laughed at his follies. In his 
Deserted Village, he has not uttered the least of his 
wisdom : 

" 111 fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay. 
A time there was, ere England's griefs began, 
« When every rood of ground maintained its man. 

For him light labor spread her wholesome store ; 
Just gave what life required, but gave no more ; 
His best companions, innocence and health ; 
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. 
. . . But times are altered ; trade's unfeeling train 
Usiurps the land, and dispossess the swain. 
Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose. 
Unwieldy wealth and cumb'rous pomp repose, 
And every want to luxury allied. 
And every pang that folly pays to pride. 
Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, 
Those calm desires that asked but little room. 
Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene, 
Lived in each nook, and brightened all the green, — 
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore, 
And rural mirth and manners are no more." 

Did ever a busy man take a holiday and not feel, as 
he joyed in the fresh life, that there was a something 
wrong in his ordinary living? What is the use in the 
money, or the production, if both be but an excess of 
store to lay by ? Does the active man of Third Street or 
Wall Street tell me that excitement is the pleasure of 



LIVING. 



123 



life ? Well, because I know that to him it is most apt 
to become so, I give him my warmest pity. We prosti- 
tute our lives, we shut ourselves up in counting-houses, 
and amid the smoke of our cigars, and our talk, and 
our exchanging, we let days slip by, one after the other 
going, until it is read in some morning newspaper that 
all of them are gone, and we with them. 

''Have you ever," asks Zschokke, ''passed a fine 
spring morning alone amid the new-born beauties of 
nature? when, at such a time, you have been roving in 
the shade of peaceful groves, through the green canopy 
of which the rosy waves of sunlight broke, when the 
soft breath of morn was wafted across the verdant 
landscape, and the nuniberless flowerets shivered, and 
the de\v on the leaflets glittered in the tears of joy which 
heaven had shed at the holiness and goodness of the 
Creator ; and the cascade leaping from the rock, and 
the river in its bed, and the forest on the hill, sent forth 
solemn murmurs, while high up above, and deep down 
below, the air resounded with the wonderful song of 
birds, and the buzzing of insects. Oh, what were your 
feelings ? Did not a sense of inexpressible delight flash 
through your bosom ? You drew a deep breath, your 
body seemed etherealized, you felt as if you must join 
your voice to the voices of the air, as if you must mix 
your tears with the tears of heaven, you longed for the 
wings of rosy morn to soar up high into the empyrean, 
or to sink into the green deptlis of the forests, or to lose 
yourself in the blue haze that veiled the unknown dis- 
tance. You longed to pour your love through the 
entire world." 

A man who buys a country-place, even should he 



124 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



move back to the city in a single year, will have learned 
a lesson which must modify all the remainder of his 
life. Two years in the country everybody should live ; 
until a man does this, there will be a something import- 
ant unknown to him. 

Last year, with a labor that was only delight, I had 
for my t^ble all the luxuries, yes, truly luxuries, for 
nature is lovingly responsive. The price of butter I 
pondered not upon, for a white heifer, which was the 
play-pet of my children, gave me all I wanted for the 
asking. Eggs, in abundance, were gotten by a walk 
of interest to the hennery ; and milk, rich and creamy, 
was the wine of the feast. 

As, following my horse, I pushed through the corn- 
blades, scattering the jewels of the fresh morning, I saic? 
to myself. How grand a thing is it to be a part of 
creation ! First, the wavy, silver-fringed corn give.«x 
me all the interest and vigorous living that comes from 
being with it and attending to its growth ; leaf by 
leaf it grows into beauty and delight for me j then, 
grain after grain, ear after ear, come the ripe shocks, 
and I may watch the development, and joy in the 
changed, and count the wealth. Then, in turn, I fodder 
and grain my heifer, and scatter over the barn -floor the 
corn of which I have such plenty for my wants. No 
greater miracle do I need, I think, to prove God all- 
mighty than that I see my corn changed into other 
forms of good ; and so I watch the nature which I 
feel to be my brother and my minister, and stand in 
delighted awe as I see demonstrated that true life is not 
one of unceasing, uncompensating toil, but that to 
live, as God placed a man, is to be in Eden indeed, 



LIVING. 



125 



and I may not but query if the serpent that turned man 
fiom the garden be not of himself. 

Living is a sacrifice, because that men prefer sacrifice 
to praise; or rather it is, that a man will not join in the 
pceans of nature. You may not answer me that the 
shop of the glass-blower, with its gases and its con- 
gested lungs and hollow eyes, is a necessity. Marcus 
Antoninus was a very wise man, and he would have 
deemed you the poorer, ''that you stood in need of 
another, and had not in yourself all things needful for 
life." Hippias, the philosopher, taught, from the full- 
ness of his experience, "that a better life than Alex- 
ander's w^as it to be the provider of our own necessities, 
to make one's own buskins." A good brother of my 
own has on his place a shop that one might find it hard 
to designate ; he is wheelwright, blacksmith, carpenter, 
tinker, gentleman, and as he walks over the broad acres, 
which his father before him tilled and beautified, he is 
a very lord, and seems to be a possessor of all needed 
things. 

Tinkering is extensibility ; a man is never a full man 
until he gives way to his nature, and tinkers. Granted 
that in society, in the artificial life of the world, 
special workers are the most useful citizens ; not, how- 
ever, are they useful to their own individualities, — this 
a specialist must be satisfied to sink ; he is the rivet 
alluded to in another reflection, — a reflection which 
thought not of man apart from his fellows. Last week 
I dug, fitted, and laid a drain ; already is the muck spot 
covering itself with a green carpet, and already have I 
had a week's holiday in the pleasure of criticising the 
job. Tinkering is playing, — suppporting one's self is 



126 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN: 

playing, provided always that tinkering and the sup- 
porting are not pushed to the point of work, — and work 
is unnecessary ; for the exercise which a man has when 
he finds himself as nature will allow him to exist in all 
comfort and happiness, is not work ; it is luxury. 

*' All nonsense this," says the man who esteems him- 
self practical. Well, my friend, it may be that I know 
more about the matter than even you do. I certainly 
do know what it is to have a family, and what it is to 
support it, too ; what it is to work, as men call labor, 
and what it is to play. And after forty years of life 
experience, spent between country and city, I am ready 
to affirm, as the result of my observations, that man de- 
parts from the real pleasure of living as he sunders 
himself from simplicity and nature ; that excess is not 
luxury, nor overfullness satisfaction. A walk through 
a garden is more instructive and suggestive than is an 
evening in the theater, the gold and silver of a sunset 
is richer than a bank, the chirping of the chick that 
pecks its shell is more musical than the zither, the free 
song of a bird is not a poorer concert than one of Nils- 
son's, which latter we may not hear without the excess 
of work which has tired and exhausted us to procure 
the five dollars for her ticket. Neither, my practical 
friend, is "five acres enough" a metaphor; what a 
practical man like you could do with five acres is just 
now, perhaps, beyond your imagination. If you have- 
not more than five children, you could keep, not starve, 
your family upon five acres. 

Nonsense it may be, however, to talk or write about 
simplicity; this is one thing that a common experience 
acknowledges and recognizes the virtue of, and yet man 



LIVING. I2y 

will never live in it to-day, but always, — let him tell the 
tale, proposes to come to it to-morrow. It is with ac- 
cumulation as with the glamour of the will-o'-the- 
wisp, a man will follow, follow, until he is up to his 
neck in the mire, and inextricable. 

Nonsense it truly is to accept the judgment, of the 
short-sighted, which esteems wealth, alone, success. 
The most unsuccessful men in the world have been the 
richest. Can an intelligent human being imagine a 
more pitiable sight than a man at the end of the course 
with nothing to show but a plethoric bank book? 
Come to know men, and one is not long in finding out 
that among the richest are to be found the shallowest 
and the wretchedest. If a man may look at the matter 
broadly enough, he will see that a mighty hoard of gold 
is intrinsically no more to the real life than was the 
glittering spangles of sulphide of iron which the adven- 
turer sacrificed his life in defending from other adven- 
turers, alike with himself ignorant and avaricious. 

In truth, and in the highest sense of competency, a 
man needs that only which supplies his wants, and 
wants are those things which may not be set apart from 
natural living ; two years in the country will show a 
man the beautiful and accurate system of supply to 
meet wants. The field is full and the granary is empty ; 
the granary is full and the field is empty. The berries 
and fruit which grew upon the hillside this year will be 
there the next. Cattle which lowed in the valleys, and 
fish which swam in the streams, although eaten this 
year, will resurrect themselves, and be in place the 
next summer. It has been thus from the beginning; it 
will, quite as likely, be so to the very end. Why, then, 



128 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

accumulate the fruit to rot, or why salt down cattle and 
fish, denying one's self meat in its freshness? 

I do not want to be esteemed Utopian ; yet when- 
ever I see a poor man toiling and moiling and sweating 
in the sultry city street, to go at evening to a home that 
is an airless room in some by-place court, I wonder 
why he neglects the cool retreat by the side of the 
valley-stream that waits him in its solitude. How is 
he going, you ask, when he has not an over dollar 
to bless himself? Well, my friend, read Thoreau's 
Walden. But Thoreau was an enthusiastic semi-Uto- 
pian fool, you answer, and his little house by the Wal- 
den pond, and the fifteen dollars a year which he 
seemed to be able to make with so little exertion, and 
which supplied his wants, could hardly answer for any- 
body save a skewer-making Yankee. Not so fast. 
Thoreau was, in one sense at least, truly great : he 
got above the vanities ; he enjoyed the fish taken in the 
fresh morning from his pond not less that he handled 
it not first on the market-stall, and he enjoyed the 
beautiful scenery surrounding him not less that he 
did not view it from the rapid-driven car, or gaze 
upon it from the excursion-deck of a flag-trimmed 
steamer; few men ever lessened their cares more than 
did Thoreau, and few men have been possessed of 
truer wealth than the resident of the pond. Read, 
my friend, read Thoreau's Walden, and recommend 
it to your poor neighbor who does not know how 
to manage, and if, further^ you choose to give him 
this little book also, which will not be ungratifying to 
the author, and equally pleasing, no doubt, to the pub- 
lisher who sells it, tell him for the writer, or rather 



LIVING. 129 

let him read it for himself, that ''Odd Hours" often 
compares two hundred and fifty dollars once made and 
spent in simple country living with quite six thousand 
now consumed in the artificialities of the town, and 
much doubts if the richer hours were not the former. 

An ass would go back, you suggest, to the best pasture. 

But he does not always ; it may be hard to explain 
it, but he does not. Yet, I am going — to-morrow. 

He has a country-seat now, and his corn-blades, and 
heifers, and chickens are poetically cultivated, and he 
forgets the mid-day heat of the corn-rows of the little 
farm. This you are thinking. But you think wrong, 
even although I have the country-seat. The site of a 
cottager's house may have a grander outlook than the 
mansion, and the owner of the mansion may appreciate 
the site of the cottage without an ability to come to its 
possession. 

"God made the country, man made the town." 

Simplicity and economy of living, and, consequently, 
economy in working, may not be arrived at in the 
town as out of the town. Most especially is this true 
of a great city; the whole thing is different, entirely 
different. A single sufficient illustration may be found 
in barefooted children. In the country, a bare foot, 
covered with sand and brown with sunshine, ready 
always on a summer's day for a wade through any 
rippling streamlet, is the very glory and joy of a child. 
In town, an undressed foot, and poverty, and loss of 
respectability, are synonyms. And it is alike through 
all things. I have a tenant whose cottagje porch is em- 
bowered in masses of honeysuckle; it cost him just 

9 



130 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

five minutes' work to plant the vine, and now it gives 
every day to his wife and children the pleasure of trail- 
ing its new sprays, inhaling its fresh odors, and watch- 
ing the humming-birds as they come and go in their 
gladness. A month ago I wanted a shade for a single 
window of a town - house, and the bill of the uphol- 
sterer was twenty dollars; neither did he give with the 
service the pleasure of the trailing sprays, nor the odors 
of fragrant smells, — he gave a fancy awning, which 
tenant and owner fear will be blown to shreds by the 
first heavy gust. 

Furniture, eminently respectable and satisfactory in 
the country, becomes instantly shabby when brought 
into the city. A house in the country in keeping with 
all its surroundings, and thereby fully satisfactory, 
would find itself quickly enough pushed into the back 
street should it chance to visit the town. A curtain 
of trailing Wisteria is a hanging for a country window 
that Schwemmer cannot equal, and it costs nothing. 
Yet, in town, I must pay this artist a hundred dollars 
for one of his laces, and after it is hung, I may not 
allow my children to touch even one of its dead flowers, 
although from the curtain of their country window — 
so much prettier — they pull and tear as they please, and 
nature, like an over-indulgent grandmother, puts all 
back again. 

In the country, I may throw out overnight my lay- 
fishline of a hundred hooks; in the morning I have 
a breakfast which has cost me nothing but recreation. 
When in town, it always costs a dollar for a fish-break- 
fast, and certainly not a particle of fun with it, — except, 
indeed, it may be esteemed amusement to higgle with 



LIVING. 



131 



a huckster, who insists on charging thirty cents for what 
fairly should be sold for ten. 

Country bathing is a costless enjoyment : the dresses 
need not to be particularly fanciful, and the bathing 
hour, under the willows, is when you will ; no hotel to 
return to, steaming with its sun-dried rooms, and a^bill 
at the end of the hot term which makes paterfami- 
lias groan ; but the laughings, and the plash ings, and 
the cheering of artless, non-contaminated children re- 
place the annoyances of hotel inconveniences, and, an 
important matter for the poor man, take the place of the 
annihilating bill. The father is not made hay of by 
virtue of his being grass, but without such conversion 
has hay in plenty. 

"Blackberries!" screams the hawker, as he passes 
the door of the drayman in the little street ; and the 
children run out, begging for that they may not have. 
The children of the man who has the little place around 
the hill, come home, even before breakfast is prepared, 
their baskets running over in fullness : and so fresh 
withal, children and berries, that the carter and the 
huckster of the little street might well despair. 

The poor man who struggles and complains in the tur- 
moils of a city is not unlike a man who might move just 
as far away as possible from water, and then murmur 
that he should not have wherewith to quench thirst. 
Nature cannot grow dates from earth buried in flag- 
covered streets, neither is it her fault that the culverted, 
offal-impregnated stream invites not to the refreshment 
of the bath. If man would profit from his kinship with 
Nature he must go to her, not fly her. 

Are you saying that this is all fine enough for the sum- 



132 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



mer-time ? Well, how about the cozy hours around the 
nut, and cider, and apple-covered table? How about 
the crackling wood fire, with its warmth, or its dreams, 
or both, as you desire? How about the hilltop and the 
sled for the children, or, if you please to indulge them, 
the skates and the glassy pond ? How about the long 
evenings with books and meditation? 

" O winter, ruler of the inverted year, 
Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled, 
The breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows 
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapt in clouds, 
A leafless branch thy scepter, and thy throne 
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels. 
But urged by storms along its slippery way, 
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st. 
And dreaded as thou art. Thou holdest the sun 
A prisoner in the yet undawning east. 
Shortening his journey between morn and noon, 
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay, 
Down to the rosy west ; but kindly still 
Compensating his loss with added hours 
Of social intercourse and instructive ease, 
And gathering, at short notice, in one group 
The family dispersed, and fixing thought. 
Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares. 
I crown thee king of intimate delights. 
Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness." 

You are not, perhaps, prepared to consider comfort 
as combined with country. This may be for a twofold 
reason : You may think it would not' be possible for 
you to leave the town, or may feel that you would 
not be willing to leave it. How, then, as you are, 
will you get the most out of your life? To start with, 
we may affirm you will not get it by overworking. 



LIVING. 133 

But may an employee, the artisan, the laboring man, 
regulate the hours of his toil ? No \ with all the trades 
unions and protection societies he may get np, cir- 
cumstances will control him. A slave is a slave, 
and society is a hard taskmaster. So long as it may 
it will grind all the work possible out of you, and 
never give more back than it can possibly avoid ; 
if you prefer slavery to freedom, you cannot be your 
own master, and, slavelike, you may only save your- 
self, as far as I can see, by shirking. I am not at all 
forgetting that in another essay in this book has been 
enjoined sticking and working in the fullness of the 
situation in which one finds himself; but it has as well 
been shown that laws are as changeable as circumstances, 
and that what is the duty of one place is not the duty 
of another. A man, however, is not to be advised to 
shirk anywhere ; this would be a meanness below his 
nature. 

But the slavery of the world is not by any means the 
singular associate of poverty. Lord Brougham, it is 
related, worked all the time, allowing himself no re- 
laxation, and begrudging the hours necessary to a 
semi-recuperation. On one occasion, it is said, that 
without sleep he labored six continuous days ; then 
rushing down into the country, slept all Saturday night, 
all day Sunday, and all Sunday night, hurrying back to 
London on Monday morning to commence the labors 
of a week as severe. 

Work is a matter of comparison. ^' It would take 
nine men of my degenerate day," said Homer, "to lift 
a stone thrown by a single warrior of the heroic ages." 
Galen wrote three hundred volumes, and yet wore to a 



134 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



century. Varro wrote five hundred, and lived to ninety. 
Dickens, our own illustrious, did much, very much 
work, but played ever in proportion. A banker of our 
country, whose fame is world-wide, told me once, in 
the course of conversation, "that he worked seven 
hours, slept eight, and played the balance of the 
twenty - four. Kirke White overworked himself at 
twenty-one. Dr. Johnson composed his '* Diction- 
ary" in seven years, and during this time found, what 
was play to him, sufficient leisure to write "The Vanity 
of Human Wishes," "Irene," and "The Rambler;" he 
lasted to seventy-five. Dio Lewis may lift his thousand 
pounds, but his aunt's son, if one the/e be, might rup- 
ture a pulmonic vessel at three hundred. To accomplish 
much one must rest ever in proportion to his require- 
ments. The Germans, as a people, physically, and cer- 
tainly intellectually, are superior, but they are great 
resters. A Teuton, with his mug of beer and his 
meerschaum, is an object of content to look at. 

Rest may not be implied, however, to be either 
gymnastics or meditation ; it is to one what most re- 
freshes him. The man who sits much, finds his recu- 
peration in running. He who thinks may chop wood, 
and, with his children, laugh at the flying splinters. 
The broker may close his books, shut out from his 
mind his cent, per cent., and gallop through the park 
on his horse, or sail over the river in his yacht. The 
doctor, tired from his round of visits, may, in an 
easy-chair, dream dreams, or do, to amuse himself, 
what I am this moment doing, — write down thoughts 
as they come to him : the writing will rest him, and he 
is not compelled to run into print, or if, to please 



LIVING. 



135 



Others, he does so, people need not buy the thoughts 
if they do not want them. As far as the risk of the 
publisher is concerned, no author need ever trouble 
himself to consider that matter; the publisher be- 
longs to a fraternity that is amply able to take care of 
itself. 

To live long, is to live comfortably, and to live com- 
fortably is, as implied, to save one's self. Kirke White 
was born weak and fragile, '^ unfit," as his friends 
said, "for any active occupation." Then, again, his 
temperament was decidedly nervous, — nerve all over. 
What else but death at twenty-one was to be expected 
of a brain that the exertion of a poem compelled the 
toning down with wet towels? It was, in this case, 
simply an instance of a soul too big for its house, and so 
the joists gave way and the walls bulged out. Neander 
is another instance. ''He would lay all day upon the 
floor among his books," says Dr. Elam, "absorbing 
recondite matter, till the stupor of repletion came over 
him, forgetful of time and place, not knowing where he 
was, on the earth or in the moon, led like a child by 
his sister to his lecture-room when the lecture hour came, 
and led away home again when it was over." Like 
the adipose tissue, which, in a sick man, is eaten up by 
his necessities, so in a case like this of the German 
student, a man's self becomes consumed from lack of 
nourishment. Yet, Neander had a frame that lasted to 
seventy-two ; it was simply wonderful. 

Study is not a provocative of decay, — quite the con- 
trary ; all statistics exhibit its relationship to longevity. 
Reflection induces calm, and calm is rest, and rest, 
proper rest, is health. Philosophy is the elixir vitae. 



136 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

In ''Body and Mind," in the ''Problems of a Physi- 
cian," much interesting matter bearing on this subject 
is reviewed. Epimenides, the seventh of the "wise 
men," is instanced as having attained to the age of a 
hundred and fifty-four.* Herodicus, the master of Hip- 
pocrates, lived to the age of one hundred. Democritus, 
who was so devoted to study and meditation as to put 
out his eyes, "that," as he said, "external objects 
might not distract his attention," lived one hundred 
and nine years. Juvenal lived to eighty-two. Pythag- 
oras and Quintilian each to eighty. Socrates, in full 
health, drank the poison cup at seventy-two. 

The age to which easy men live may better be in- 
ferred from the tables of Dr. Madden, author of the 
" Infirmities of Genius :" 



Aggregate 

years. Average. 

Twenty natural philosophers .... 1504 75 

Twenty moral philosophers .... 1417 70 

Twenty sculptors and painters .... 141 2 70 

Twenty authors on law, etc I394 69 

Twenty medical authors 1368 68 

Twenty authors on revealed religion . . 1350 67 

Twenty philologists 1323 66 

Twenty musical composers .... 1284 64 

Twenty novelists and miscellaneous authors . 1257 62} 

Twenty dramatists 1245 62 

Twenty authors on natural religion . . 1245 62 

Twenty poets 1144 57 

The more time a man takes from the simple wear and 

tear of life, the more years does he live, if not always 



Lempriere says two hundred and eighty-nine. 



LIVING. 



137 



counted in days, always in the truest meaning of the 
term ; man lives in proportion as he takes in of life, 
and not as he frets, and fumes, and worries with his 
fellows about things which, sooner or later, must be 
seen to be of no earthly account, or heavenly, either, 
as for the matter of that. ''We are often astounded," 
says good Mr. Kaye, "by the ambition of youth ; but 
we ought not to be offended by it. It is sure to bring 
its own punishment. To sow in vanity is to reap in 
mortification. We learn in time how little we can ever 
know, and how ridiculous we make ourselves by pre- 
tending to know everything. When a man has learnt to 
say, 'I am as ignorant as a child on this or that sub- 
ject,' or 'as powerless as a baby to do this or that 
thing,' he has mastered one of the great difficulties of 
life, — he has entered upon a new stage of his career. 
If, however, he says it boastingly, scornfully, he is a 
greater fool than if he pretended to know, and to be 
able to do, everything. To affect to consider the 
knowledge or the power which one has not attained, 
not worth possessing, is simply to write one's self an 
ass. There is no need, on the other hand, of any 
great parade of humility. You are a man. Be thank- 
ful for it. It is no humiliation that you are not a god. 
If your neighbor knows what you do not know, and can 
do what you cannot do, the chances are that you know 
and can do some things which are out of the circle of 
his potentiality. You do not know one star from an- 
other, but you can put the Sakoontala into Greek verse. 
You do not know the principle of the diving-bell, but 
you could fortify a city in accordance with the system 
of Cormantagne." 



138 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

Be comfortable, then, in your work and your pro- 
gressions, "and be neither elated because you know so 
much, nor depressed because you know so little." 

Coming across the expression of Pascal, that " Man 
is necessarily so much of a fool, that it would be a 
species of folly not to be a fool," our Optimist de- 
clares that it made him happy for a time, almost beyond 
precedent. " Make up your mind that you are a fool," 
says he, "and that it is altogether out of nature not to 
be a fool, and a measureless calm descends upon you." 
He means, that when you and I have arrived at a com- 
prehension of the true life, and still will so per- 
sistently avoid living it, there is to be found a con- 
solation in believing that man's natural state is that 
of a fool. 

A partial remedy, however, against overwork, and 
the only one I know anything about as relation is had 
with the artificial life we insist on living, is management 
of time. A man behind with his work is in a sad con- 
dition, to say the best of it. It is easy to get so far 
behind that one can never possibly catch up. A man, 
for example, who will not, in the vigor of youth, con- 
sider rationally the increasing wants which must grow 
with a family, gets behind terribly ; it is a streak of 
luck if ever he has his nose elsewhere than at the grind- 
stone. A man gets behind, when, in his living, he for- 
gets the homely maxim, that " Every dog has his day." 
The successful man will not be successful always ; he 
has only his day not less surely than the dog. En- 
viron yourself in defenses, that when the stronger man 
comes along he shall not push you wholly over the 
wall. 



LIVING. 139 

The rime of a man's work is influenced necessarily 
by the nature of the work. A physician in ordinary 
may not say that from lo to 3 are his hours; the ring 
at his bell would quite as likely be at the a.m. as at the 
P.M., but he may grow out of the long hours through a 
management which shall convert him, in time, into the 
specialist, and the servitude may be fairly passed back 
to him who has the strength of back to bear, to be 
shifted again in turn as the young back reaches its age. 
An apothecary must stick to the responsibility of his 
prescription-counter, but it is a weary business to be 
forever over disagreeable odors ; in time, however, he 
may devolve the care, with the experience, upon his 
assistant. So a business man, with his shops and 
his foundries, may also get out of the round, if he 
manages with care and the proper sense of justice the 
power which he controls. A lawyer may graft into 
himself the strength of a new shoot, and the branch, 
while getting from the stock its nourishment, may 
grow to cover with its shade that which has nour- 
ished it. 

To get work through with in the first hours in which 
it may be done is always excellent management. A 
man who plays first, and leaves his task till afterwards, 
finds the afterwards very uncertain time ; the work of 
Monday is apt to fall over into Tuesday, and Friday 
pushes Saturday so hard that the one week gets, in 
spite of himself, into the next, so he is soon in a 
corner, and, what is worse, is likely to remain there. 

The laborer, it has been rather implied, has but little 
chance for rest. Yet is this in some respects his own 
fault. It is a poor management that is not willing to 



I40 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



take a stride of one or two miles, even after a hard 
day's work, that the home may be in the suburbs rather 
than in a filthy-smelling court. May a man recuperate 
where scarcely an unpolluted atom of oxygen enters 
his lungs? or rest, where constant disturbances break 
his slumbers ? A man to have his work done in season 
must feel able to his task ; he will get this ability best 
from pure air and comfortable surroundings. Again, 
it happens that the dram is not an unknown refresh- 
ment with this class. Against the liquor as liquor I 
have just here nothing to urge, except that, as a nutri- 
tive agent, a pint of porter is not equal to a pint of 
water combined with a cracker; 'but a pint of porter 
taken each day for two weeks costs about one day of toil 
to pay for it. Here, then, is a whole livelong day that 
might be saved for enjoyment with the children in a 
stroll through the woods, and which day might be 
turned to the pleasure-getting account of itself and 
coming days, by a bag of chestnuts or hickory-nuts 
gathered and brought to the drying cupboard. Doc- 
tors' bills are engendered of noisome alleys ; this is 
another matter that poor management not unfrequently 
compels to many days of toilsome, wearying over- 
work. A laboring-man should always consider this 
in with the rent he is to pay ; it will be a most likely 
addition if he selects the alley. 

Buying in driblets is another matter that compels 
overworking. A ton of coal which, in the yards, 
would cost four days of work, bought by the bucket in 
the shops costs just eight days ; four days lost, which 
a little management should save to the laborer for 
self-cultivation, and which cultivation might eventually 



LIVING. 141 

raise- him to some easier position. The other day I 
paid a female servant over a hundred and fifty dollars 
which had been allowed to accumulate in my hands. 
I tried to show this girl how, put at the best interest, 
this money was equal to just one month of rest to her 
in every year of her coming life. I failed, however, 
and by the next Sunday it was represented in dresses, 
bonnets, etc. I knew a young professional man who 
declared that his first week of holiday should come 
only with the interest-money which should pay for it ; 
his interest-money now warrants many holidays, and he 
takes and enjoys them. I have always considered this 
man sensible in taking the risk of his life outlasting his 
saving days. 

A thousand dollars in a savings-bank, or in a mort- 
gage, or good railroad stock, is a great lightener of 
labor in an artificial-living community ; it saves the 
work of as many days as its interest represents one's 
earnings. But the thousand dollars saved need not pri- 
marily, under ordinary circumstances, represent as many 
hours or days of overwork. It must, however, repre- 
sent economy. The young man who denies himself 
the concert or the excursion until the ticket consumes 
not his direct labor, has, soon enough, both the ticket 
and the day's work in his pocket. If a concert costs 
a dollar, it will be met by ten or twelve dollars, which 
one may have put. to work for the purpose. Or the 
summer trip of a week at the seashore will be paid for 
every year by five hundred that shall have been saved 
and put at interest. The expenditure of interest does 
not appear to be felt like other money, it always seems 
to one as if he has had his vacation for nothing. At 



142 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN, 

least it seems thus until it ceases to be a matter for 
concern one way or another. 

We may conclude our essay, then, by remarking that 
if our premises are right, overwork is to be avoided 
first and best, by getting into the ways of simplicity. 
Second, by the exercise of a prudent economy, which 
saves before it spends. 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 

HE was not a true philosopher who stumbled into 
the ditch from having his gaze too intently fixed 
on the stars. And might it not very well be that poor, 
much-abused Xanthippe was Xanthippe, because Soc- 
rates was Socrates? One certainly may not wonder 
that Gretchen the Sad, as Dame Diedrich, was Gretchen 
the Shrew, as Frau Van Winkle. 

Life circumstances would seem to be pretty much as 
one makes them. Between Scylla on the right, and 
Charybdis on the left, runs the channel. If the rock 
beaches, or the whirlpool engulfs, the fault will most 
likely be found in our steering ; fewer wrecks are to be 
attributed to the elements than to navigators. . 

Granted that the artificial trammels with which man, 
in his relations to society, has environed himself are 
necessities, then is he to recognize that through such 
necessities does he complicate his life and living, and 
assume to himself the more to consider and the more to 
provide for. A man must breathe the atmosphere with 
which he surrounds himself, be it of roses or miasm. 

A life, to be a full and proper one, may consider not 
alone to-day, but must always have a future which in- 
vites it. Passing along the street, some time ago, my 
attention was attracted to a print hanging in a shop- 
window, in which was pictured a boat, filled with 
travelers, crossing a stream. In the bow was Youth, 
all excitement and hope, pointing forward ; in the 

(143) 



144 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



Stern, Age, weary and dejected, no trust expressed, — no 
anticij^ation. The artist lacked breadth of conception. 
The season of old age has, in God's harmony, no more 
of barrenness in it than has that of fresh boyhood or 
vigorous adult life. Let things be shown as they are, 
not as man makes them. This picture has in it, how- 
ever, a great life lesson to every man and woman who 
looks upon it, — perhaps the artist meant so to express 
himself. What the engraving is called I could not 
read, it being far back in the window ; but a very good 
title would be, ''The Evening of a Purposeless Day." 

What a vain and foolish thing, when he gets to the 
stern, seems the man whose life has been spent in the 
service of Mammon for Mammon's self! or even, indeed, 
in the very fullness of his life, how unenviable is he, 
how wasteful has been such an existence, how thought- 
less of necessities ! — like the butterfly fluttering about 
in the sunshine of a summer's day, heeding not that the 
wings shall fail in the whirlwind. 

If to-day were even all of life, getting over-riches 
would not be wisdom ; it is as bad for a man to be too 
rich as to be too poor, — bad for himself: the channel is 
between. 

Old age is a misnomer. What is the end of a circle? 
or where is the beginning? "I rejoice," said, on an 
occasion, an astronomer, as he lay on his death-bed, 
"that the call-bell is ringing for the start. What a 
grand journey is before me ! — the stars, all of them, in 
my way. I long to be off." *'Let the light enter," 
were the last words spoken by Goethe as, in his old 
age, he laid down the pen, with which he had been all 
day writing, to follow the messenger into the wider 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 145 

field of life. '^Let not the Persians," said Cyrus, 
''lament at my funeral as if I were really dead; let 
them the rather rejoice that I have passed to a some- 
thing higher and better." 

To an old man it should be precisely as with the 
hopeful lad who anticipates his first journey. Why 
not ? He ought really to feel the greater satisfaction, 
for is he not the farther on ? When an old man feels 
not this way, so far as his own self-life is concerned, 
there has been a mistake in what he calls his life. 
''Davie ! Davie !" said Dr. Johnson, as Garrick showed 
him all the attractions of Hampton Court, "these are 
the things that make it hard to die." 

A rich man, over-rich, is, through the troubles which 
he brings on himself, although few have arrived at the 
insight which recognizes it, among the most unenviable 
of mortals : to his cares he becomes as a servant, and 
to his anxieties, as a slave. 

"There is," said Kant, in one of his strictures, "a 
considerable difference between thinking we possess a 
hundred dollars, and possessing them." " Daran ist 
philosophisch nichts zu erkennen," answered Hegel; 
and this reply, which is pronounced delicious by Lewis, 
has a world of meaning to a man whose possessions are 
cheating him out of those joys which are so entirely aside 
from money. "I have been living," said Johann 
Gottlieb Fichte, "for the last four or five months in 
Leipzig, the happiest life I can remember. I came 
here with my head full of grand projects, which all 
burst, one after another, like so many soap-bubbles, 
without leaving me so much as the froth. At first," 
continued he, " this troubled me not a little, and, half in 



146 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

despair, I took a step which I ought to have taken long 
before. Since I could not alter what was without me^ 
I resolved to try and alter what was within. I threw 
myself into philosophy, and here I found the antidote 
for all the evils and cares of life, and joy enough into 
the bargain." The more modern man calls philosophy 
reason. 

'' What a heaven lives the scholar in," says good old 
Bishop Hall, "that at once, in one close room, can 
daily converse with all the glorious martyrs and fathers, 
that can single out, at pleasure, either sententious Ter- 
tullian, or grave Cyprian, or resolute Jerome, or flowing 
Chrysostom, or divine Ambrose, or divine Bernard, or, 
who alone is all of these, heavenly Augustine, and talk 
with them, and hear their wise and holy counsels, ver- 
dicts, and resolutions ! Let the world contemn us ; 
while we have these delights we cannot envy them, we 
cannot wish ourselves other than we are. Study itself 
is our life. How much sweeter, then, is the fruit of 
study, the conscience of knowledge ! in comparison 
whereof the soul that has once tasted it easily contemns 
all human comfort." 

*' Go now, ye worldlings, and insult over our pale- 
ness, our neediness, our neglect. Ye could not be so 
jocund if you were not so ignorant. If you did not want 
knowledge, you would not overlook him that hath it. 
For me, I am so far from emulating you, that I profess 
I would as lief be a brute beast as an ignorant rich man." 

But some men cannot help making money, having 
money ; it is their forte, their genius, their duty. They 
can, however, help sacrificing to it ; this is what is meant. 
The richer man may well be the better one, but the 



WISE AND OTHERWISE, 147 

man must override the money, and not the money the 
man. I always look with admiration on a certain 
friend, the originator and upholder of a great manu- 
facturing business, who so well comprehends his relation 
to the true life that he ever acts, and seems to feel, as 
the steward of a co-operative company ; his surround- 
ings are never less sunshiny than is his own face, and 
this, to everybody, shows the light that is within him. 

One may never, with propriety, be personal ; but, 
needing an illustration, I may venture to refer to the 
immense establishment in which this book has been 
made for the reader, — the largest, as a traveled friend 
tells me, in the world. To go through this house is 
simply to walk amid acres of books. Here are offices, 
printing-rooms, sales-rooms, bindery-rooms, packing- 
rooms ; indeed, it impresses one as an easier task to 
attempt the description of what there is not rather 
than of what there is. Cries of clerks, the screams of 
porters, the hammering of the packers, — these are 
sounds to be heard from morning until night, and, in 
some seasons, from night until morning. Now, as I go 
into this place, with my own quieter life in the prospect, 
I find continually recurring to me the question of the 
motive. If to exercise the great power of such an 
establishment for the good and elevation of humanity, 
by casting far and wide the light of an exalted press, be 
the object, how grand is it to be the lever of such a 
force ! If, on the contrary, self actuates and influences, 
how might one rejoice that he is not connected with a 
place of such unceasing toil and large responsibility! 

As is the mainspring to a watch, so is motive to the 
actions of a man. A watch with a bad spring must un- 



148 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

duly run down or run wrong. A man with a weak or 
an ill motive is seen soon enough to be unreliable ; it 
is simply out of the nature of both the things to be any- 
thing else than wrong, and the face of the one shows 
it not less fully than does that of the other. 

A true motive is like a strong ship : it bears its pos- 
sessor over the waves and through the storms safely and 
happily into port ; it makes a young man vigorous, and 
never lets an old man come to an end ; it spans the 
chasm men insist on calling death, and lands one, with 
all his life, on the other side. A true motive has never 
a present, which is its all ; from the start-point it is a 
something that lateralizes like the two sides of a base- 
less triangle, growing ever wider and wider, taking in 
as the ability enlarges. This is that which isthe^fresh- 
ness and fullness of a life when the object is noble; it 
is growth — the eternal progression. 

How becoming is it in a young man to commence 
aright, or, if out of the right, to get into it as soon as 
possible ! Let the first question always be, " Cui bono?" 
What good. To what end ? This should be the begin- 
ning to everything. If the end be a country-seat, and 
a hundred thousand dollars, or a palace, and a million 
of pounds, commence again ; the game is not worth the 
chase. If one in such pursuit does not find that he has 
run into a close, it is only because he will have the good 
luck to be cut off on the way. 

There comes occasionally to see me an old man, who 
can view his advancing years only with dissatisfaction, 
if not, indeed, with absolute horror. Can anything 
be sadder than this, or more unlike what it should be ? 
"O my friends and judges," said Socrates, ''if death 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 



149 



is a journey to another place, and there, as men say, 
all the dead are, what good can be greater than to 
go this journey? If, indeed, when the pilgrim arrives 
in the world below he finds the true judges who 
are said to give judgment there, Minos, and Rhada- 
manthus, and ^acus, and Triptolemus, and other 
sons of God who were righteous in their own life, 
that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would 
not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus, 
and Musaeus, and Hesiod, and Homer ? Nay, if this 
be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall 
have a wonderful interest in a place whefe I can con- 
verse with Palamedes, and Ajax, the son of Telamon, 
and other heroes of old, who have suffered death 
through an unjust judgment; and there will be no 
small pleasure, I think, in comparing my sufferings with 
theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search 
into true and false knowledge, as in this world, so also 
in that. I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends 
to be wise and is not. What would not a man give, O 
judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great 
Trojan expedition, or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or num- 
berless others, men and women, too? Wherefore, O 
judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this 
of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, 
either in this life, or after death." 

What a contrast ! 

^'Briider/' sang softly Beethoven, as he was passing 
away : 

" Briider, iiber'm Stern enzelt 
Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen." 

I will not try to translate the sublime outstretching 



150 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

and outlooking of these lines ; a hundred times have I 
read and re-read them, and always do they bring the 
same thrill to my soul-life, — measureless confidence and 
measureless immensity. Grand Beethoven ! 

Who, at the end of life, might, with better grace, 
write "Laus Deo," than a Haydn? who never com- 
menced a score but with the words, ^' In nomine Do- 
mine," or ''Soli Deo gloria." 

It is related that of a dinner given by Lord Boling- 
broke, the bill of fare was shown to Dean Swift as an 
inducement for that distinguished individual to attend : 
*'A fig for your bill of fare!" answered the Dean; 
''show me your bill of company." The fare of life is 
little more than the fare of a dinner, — the company is 
the thing, the influence exerted and received. 

" Men live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best ; 
And he whose heart beats quickest, lives the longest." 

When one sees a man of large influence using his 
means for the common good, he says, that man has 
caught the truth of life. When, on the contrary, a man 
is found grasping and avaricious, exhibiting self at 
every point, we fall into meditation over his folly. As 
one, is he, making a journey, having no provision for 
a stream which must be passed. Must not necessarily 
such a one, when the water is reached, exclaim with 
the dying Mazarin, "O my poor soul, what is to be- 
come of thee ? Whither wilt thou go?" What a con- 
trast to the trusting, heroic words of the bishop of 
Poictiers ! "Go out, soul, go out. Of what canst 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 



151 



thou be afraid ? Hast thou not studied duty for seventy- 
years?" 

A proper beginning considers always the whole of 
a ground to be passed over; with Epicurus, it is to 
recognize that true happiness is that which considers 
the enjoyment of the whole life, and not alone that of 
the day or hour. With Socrates, it is ''to bring phi- 
losophy down from the clouds, and to make it the basis 
of morality." 

But we started with the thought that it is not well for 
a man's self that he get over-rich. "If I were as rich 
as the day," said Benjamin Franklin, " I would be as 
generous as the sun. But, stop," he queries, ''is it 
the true experience, as people say, that wealth imparts 
a bird-lime quality to a man which permits of actions, 
at which, in his native purity, he would revolt?" 

It takes a very strong man to resist the deteriorating 
influences of a great bank account ; it seems like the 
virus which gets into the sore on the hand of a dissec- 
tor : there are, in the world, people too strong for the 
poison ; but there are not many of them. One word, 
however, in spite of all this, would seem to contain the 
duty and the safety of a man, — " Steward !" I am a 
steward. It might, perhaps, be questioned if one so 
esteeming himself could have too much in his charge ; 
true it is, that his neighbor, not so called, would not be 
without reason for rejoicing that the care came not to 
him ; but the steward must enjoy a satisfaction in re- 
cognizing that he has been selected as the instrument 
of such influence. 

Poverty, on the other hand, is not less an instrument 
of deterioration to a man. It is the other extreme. 



52 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



Can a man grow in grace, with the bill of his baker 
waiting at the front door, and the butcher battering 
away at the back gate ? Some men could ; Giordano 
Bruno paled only a shade when the fagots were lighted. 
Still, one will do well not to subject his capillaries to 
unnecessary trials. An irate baker may make one blush 
even if he does not .make him pale. Keep out of the 
temptations of poverty ; this is the safer rule where it 
is possible to follow it. An imprudent man is a breeder 
of discontent, and his pleasures shallow as he advances. 
"Twenty pounds for an income," said Micawber, 
"and twenty pounds and sixpence spent, and there- 
suit is misery. Nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings, 
and sixpence spent, and the result is happiness." The 
man who was always "waiting for something to turn 
up," made few more sensible expressions than this. 
Better, much better, to dine on the penny-roll than be 
in debt for the sixpence. 

A man may have a comfortable home, so long as he 
has independence, but only so long. I knew once an 
author quite akin with Mr. Boker's "Ivory Carver;" 
he carved his thoughts, and his wife and children suf- 
fered. Poor things ! I often wished I could see a gen- 
eral family-funeral from that house : it would have been 
the least of their evils. Uncommon sense is never to 
be allowed to take the place of the commoner and 
more convenient article. If it is to be comfortable 
up-stairs, the crack in the smoky kitchen stove is to be 
doctored ; if one is to avoid the scurvy, vegetables 
must come from the garden, and there must be vege- 
tables even though there may be no roses. 

Socrates was a grand man. We may all rejoice that 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 153 

he was just exactly what he was; but, for all that, I 
may sympathize with Phaenarete, and moan with Xan- 
thippe over his family delinquencies. A man who, at 
earliest morning, is found stopping mechanics on the 
way to their shops to enter into disputation, or who, in 
forgetfulness of three inquiring, restless children at 
home, stands, statue-like, all night in meditation, is not 
just exactly the one to grow amiability in a woman. 
I find here the vulnerable tendo-Achillis in my hero, 
and see just so much the less wisdom in him when he 
speaks of '' marrying this woman, because, desiring to 
live and converse with men, he felt convinced that if 
he could endure her, he could endure all others." I 
cannot help but feel that I should have entertained just 
a trifle more respect for his perfections had he told, in- 
stead, how he watched the sick babies, or brought home 
the marketing. — But a field of wheat is not less bread 
that here and there is a tare. 

Rip Van Winkle would have converted an angel into 
a shrew. Mr. Jefferson, with his smooth, genial face and 
oily twaddling, may not deceive us. Rip was precisely 
what Gretchen describes him as being: * 'A good-for- 
nothing, drunken, unfeeling, unsympathizing, worthless 
brute !" Lacking she, adjectives, to fill up the picture, I 
cannot and I will not laugh at the rabbit, which the 
hungry, tired-out woman gets only in words to put into 
her pot ; it may be funny to Rip, but I sympathize with 
Gretchen. 

Half a loaf is better than no bread ; do not less be- 
cause you may not do more. Mr. Kaye, in his charm- 
ing ''Optimist" essays, refers to picking up a paper in 
which was a passage headed ''Romantic Suicide," re- 



154 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

lating how ''a fine young man, named Arsene, hanged 
himself in his master's house, near Paris," his quar- 
rel with the world being that Nature had condemned 
him to be a grocer. Behind him he left a memoran- 
dum, bewailing his hard lot, and beseeching his parents 
" to erect a simple tombstone to his memory, and to 
inscribe upon it these words, ' Born to be a man ; died 
a grocer ! ' " Now the plain truth is, says the Opti- 
mist, and every sensible person may only say the same 
thing, '-'■ he was not born to be a man ; if he had been, 
he would have lived a grocer." *' I remember," wrote 
this Arsene, *' to have somewhere read that a man 
should apply his intelligence to be useful to humanity, 
and as I see that I shall never be fit for anything but 
to weigh cheese and dried plums, I have made up my 
mind to go to another world which I have heard of, 
and see whether there may not be a place for me 
there," — a place which Mr. Kaye expresses his full 
faith in his finding, — the place of silly grocerlings. 

It is a very disagreeable thing to work out of one's 
place ; indeed, it is just about as bad a thing as one 
may conceive of; but, if one would not get in the 
right traces when he had the chance, or if it might be 
that he never had a chance, why he has nothing else to 
do than to work astraddle or outside entirely, if so it 
may be. Do your best, and trust it shall all come out 
right in some way or another. What is higher philos- 
ophy than this? Then, again, it is not a difficult thing 
for a person without any particular temperament to 
mistake his calling. The only way I was ever able to 
decide my own was by tossing up a penny, — rather, I 
should say, I. brought things to a focus in that way: 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. i^^ 

throwing up the coin it came down head, and that fin- 
ished the matter ; the inanimate head settled what the 
sentient head could not, and I am satisfied that I stum- 
bled into the right place, for, however trifling may be 
the success met with, I never have felt that I could have 
done any better elsewhere. I pull my best ; it does not 
at all worry me that I may be criticised and blamed for 
not doing better ; I simply cannot, and that is the end 
of it. I am not going to inflate myself like -^sop's 
frog, or burst the boiler by attempting the work of a 
ten-horse power with five. I recognize that five-horse 
power is just as good, indeed better, in its place than 
would the ten be. 

It is wisdom to strike the mean of one's good ; too 
much good is a positive evil. Wine is a good thing, a 
very good thing, but it takes not much overuse to make 
of it a very bad thing. So is it good to enjoy the 
luxury of a feast, but a feast every day so clogs the 
appetite that soon nothing is enjoyable. A man is to 
understand that nothing is positively good in the ab- 
stract, as is there no such thing as evil in itself. Good 
is the absence of evil, and evil is the absence of good. 
''Every pleasure," says the Epicurean school, ''is in 
itself good, but, in comparison with another, it may 
become an evil." "The philosopher," says Epicurus, 
" differs from the common man in this : that while they 
both seek pleasure, the former knows how to forego 
certain enjoyments which will cause pain and vexation 
hereafter ; whereas the common man seeks only the 
immediate enjoyment." Money, fame, the pursuit of 
enjoyment, all come in the categories of good or evil, 
as they may be placed. Let the thoughts of to-day be 



156 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

carried into to-morrow, and ask the morrow of the 
actions of to-day. Instinct in a brute, should be reason 
in a man, the abuse, only, of instinct can make of it an 
evil. 

Simplicity yields the truest pleasure, yields it the 
longest, and costs least of labor or of care. Did ever 
a man tire of water? Does not the convivialist turn to 
the spring from the sparkle of his Moselle and rejoice 
in it as the most refreshing of draughts ? Does not a 
man step down from the silken cushions of his coach 
and envy the stable-boy who may use his legs ? Did 
ever a man tire of self-locomotion ? and was there ever 
one who did not tire of all other kinds ? But man is 
alike the world over, — the gouty foot in the coach 
envies the shoeless one upon the pave, and the shoeless 
foot envies the gouty one, and the possessors of both 
are alike foolish in their ignorance of wherein consists 
the true good. 

A man, to satisfy the morrow, is to consider the 
effects of what he does to-day, — and day by day. 

Blessed is that man, I have been thinking, who, to 
his age, has preserved the freshness, the simplicity, and 
the purity of youth. If upon earth there is one sight 
more refreshing than another, it is the beholding of a 
good, great man, — a man with an unseared heart, and 
an unpolluted vision. And such men there are. 

A day, to have been well spent, must have in it no 
sense of condemnation. That which man calls con- 
science is a light shining for the guidance of every 
individual. It is no argument at all against its truth- 
fulness that it exhibits not the same pathway to all. 
Right is not an abstract thing, but varies with circum- 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 



157 



Stances. The Right of the savage is not the Right of 
his civilized neighbor. Right, to the individual, is the 
acting up to his highest intelligence, let the grade of 
this be what it may. Conscience is a thing of growth, 
and its highest and fullest development is love. Love 
is considerate, is tender, is mindful; is to prefer another 
to one's self; is to forget all selfishness in a humanity 
that considers not first one's own desires or comforts; 
is to place others before one's self. 

To be in that mind which broadens into a general 
love of our kind is to be in the way which makes us 
producers of the greatest amount of comfort, which 
comfort, of a necessity, is reflected back upon the giver, 
thus making a happiness which is, to its limit, general, 
and of a circle, — it gives back what it receives, and 
receives what it gives back. Life may not be squared 
by rule, seeing that men differ much in temperament 
and disposition ; but a rule which will square itself with 
life is, "To do to others as you would that others should 
do to you ;" and whatever the situation, whatever the 
circumstances, this a man can do to his fellows. 

A surgeon, for example, may not do upon the person 
of another an operation which, under like circum- 
stances, he would not have performed upon himself. 
A business man may not congratulate himself on a 
bargain which is secured to him at the expense of 
another. Either action has in it the elements of a 
wrong, which wrong must, of a necessity, be in some 
way a detriment to the offender. It cannot be that any 
action is right, or can bring true gain, where another 
in any respect suffers. 

A man cannot, in the proper sense of the word, be a 



158 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

manly man, where his calculations consider self alone. 
A capitalist who forgets, in his intercourse with labor, 
that work should redound to a common good, is as cul- 
pable as the laborer who is constantly trying to injure 
capital, — more so perhaps, as for the latter a measure 
of excuse may exist in that lack of knowledge which is, 
or should be, judgment. I once asked a prominent 
capitalist, overrun with business and burdened with 
care, why he did not give over his charge and retire 
from his work. ' * I have, ' ' he answered, ' ' three hundred 
partners in the business [alluding to his employees], 
none of whom, with the exception of myself, are able 
to give up the work. If I retire, all must retire, or, if 
not this, must necessarily lose much by my leaving them. 
Long ago," said he, '*I felt that a man consulted best 
the principle of true success when self was not put the 
prominent personage in one's calculations \ so in this 
business each individual is made as truly a partner as 
circumstances admit, and in consequence, all of us find 
a comfortable and satisfactory support ; more even than 
this ; each one recognizes that the common success is 
his individual success, and thus every man holds as a 
link in a chain." 

I once asked a physician, full half of whose time I 
knew to be spent in the alleys and by-ways, wherein he 
found his compensation. He answered me in this wise : 

"Indiscriminate charity, from the much that I have 
seen, and daily see, I am satisfied has in it even more of 
evil than of good ; laziness is, through it, engendered, 
and pauperism encouraged. Even the grand clinics 
of the schools," continued he, "havens in which so 
many find relief and rest, are made by the shiftless and 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 



159 



dishonorable, ministers to their prodigality; the college 
door standing so wide open that discrimination no 
longer distinguishes between him who can and ought 
to contribute to its expenses and him who cannot. 
More than in this the physician is concerned, is its 
effects upon the people themselves. At first they ex- 
cuse the act of meanness in taking advantage of the 
charity by arguing themselves into the conviction that 
here is to be secured the services of the most able men ; 
but the apparent gain of a free service experienced, they 
are ever after found as pensioners on the purses of the 
schools, and it is rare indeed that any contribution to 
the expenses incurred in treating them is ever offered. 
From this step of dependence these people are often 
enough found taking a second, and it may very well be 
imagined to what extent a man's self-respect may thus 
be destroyed.* 

"Street giving — ^purses opened by warm and generous 
Hearts — is another source of greater evil than good. 
This appeals to, and encourages, the lowest traits; it 
never did a good save by accident, or if it did, then the 
head rather than the heart unloosed the strings. Neither 
is this giving charity, for a true charity would prompt 
such fuller relief as could only come from inquiry into 
the relations of cases, and this might not be from the 
dime or dollar given. But where," continued he, "you 
say I am most found, exists the field for the dispensation 
of good ; here, in the dark, close alleys, off from the 
gay streets, indigence seeks to hide itself; here poverty, 
supperless and bedless, is found ; here destitution must 

* Good is not good in itself, but is always of association. 



l6o ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

sink into the seething mass of the hopeless if no out- 
stretched hand is by to save. Seeing these things, I have 
not been able to satisfy my conscience otherwise than in 
personal effort for the seeking out of true distress ; and 
this work," said he, ''saddening as it may seem, has 
come to furnish me with the greatest happiness of living. ' ' 

True charity comes only from a heart attuned to love ; 
a loving, generous heart thinks not of the return of the 
bread cast upon the waters, but it comes back never- 
theless. 

I may find fault with the publisher of my book, or 
the book of anybody else, if no higher motive makes 
him a publisher than the question of sale. The moral 
nature of a man who, for money, would multiply evil 
thoughts, must, without doubt, be in an unenviable 
state; and though wealth should cover him, as with a 
mantle, yet must he be poor indeed. Nothing is one 
to consider more than the matter of the influence he 
exerts ; this applies not more to the richest than to the 
poorest man. 

Let no one seek to argue himself into a belief that he 
is without such influence, or by such standard weigh his 
actions. 

To the ground was thrown a seed, and he who cast 
it, passing on his way, forgot him of it. But the seed 
died not ; from it sprang a tender sprout ; as time 
passed, this sprout became a yielding, swaying sapling, 
and this, in turn, became a great tree by the wayside; 
and to this tree birds came and found a habitation, and 
the children of the people came and played about its 
roots, and the wearied traveler rested himself beneath 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. jgi 

its shade. Standing by the seaside, upon a great hill, 
it became known in time as a landmark, and many- 
mariners it directed to the haven ; it has stood for years, 
and bids fair to last for generations. And this habita- 
tion for the birds, this play-place for happy children, 
this rest for the wearied, this mark which, gives to the 
mariner the first thrill of home, came from a seed, — a 
little seed, thrown by a listless man, as he passed along 
a quiet path by a hilltop. 

"John," said a staid Quaker wife, living in a primi- 
tive settlement, — ''John, when next thee goes to the city 
thee will bring me home a service of silver for our table. ' ' 

"Silver !" answered John. "Does thee think we can 
afford that?" 

"Afford it!" returned the wife. "Assuredly; have 
we not laid by much money? are we not indeed over- 
rich for our wants?" 

"Well, does thee think, then, that neighbor C can 
afford silver, and neighbors D and E?" 

"Oh, certainly not ; we shall be the only persons in 
the neighborhood to have such a thing." 

"Then, granted we have the money, have we the right 
to bring amongst our neighbors that which must carry 
with it envy, and introduce, most likely, attempts at 
competition, which will be a source of discomfort to 
our poorer friends ?' ' Ruth felt it better to continue 
with the china, and the simplicity and quiet of the set- 
tlement remained undisturbed. 

Worthy alone of the true man is the charity that 
neither parades nor vaunts itself. Let good works be 
done, because to do good is to be in unison with good. 



1 62 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

Starting in the fresh morning from his eastern ocean 
bed, decked with spangles of gold and laden to over- 
flowing with blessings, on his joy visit goes the vivifying 
sun; down over the earth into the drowsy eyes of 
languid beauty casts he a greeting; through massive 
window trappings, into the great chamber where rests 
exhausted the form of a king, makes he his way; by 
crevices of the damp cellar, where, crouching and 
hiding in despair, the neglected, yet persecuted one, 
had sought to find refuge, enters he ; into the cheerless 
closet-room of the tired seamstress goes he with a whisper 
of hope ; and blackness is made light, the darkness of 
night and the darkness of heart take to themselves wings 
and fly away ; beauty is invested with renewed charms ; 
the mighty one starts up to his life labor ; the deserted 
one, who, desirous only of oblivion, had laid down 
in her weariness, goes out now in hope ; the overtasked 
one, she who, in despair, had almost faltered, deter- 
mines still again to trust ; the sleepy insect world 
awakens, flowers unfold afresh their concealed tints, 
the morning breezes spread broadcast their wealth of 
perfume, birds give to nature the incense of their songs, 
earth, sea, sky, everything mingles in the diversified 
praise. The great sun gave all this good, conferred all 
this happiness, imparted all this joy ; but it was done 
— in silence. 

Luna, the night angel, the silver engarmented, how 
placidly she looks down over the quiet valley and upon 
the sleeping lake ; in what a soft sheen brightens she 
the hills, and the mountains, and the juttings of earth; 
how speeds her grace from land to land, and from ocean 
center to ocean center ; how from heaven to earth leaps 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 163 

her glory, and how it envelops prayers of trust, of 
hope, of heart thankfulness ! — yet all is in silence. 

Charity must extend itself to judgment. 

What man calls judgment is a matter which should 
give him great concern. Judgment, to be solid, can 
only be so by being founded on that state of under- 
standing which takes in a matter judged to the extent 
of its circle. Thus, if we take offenses in themselves, 
we have but the one side of a. circle, the other being 
him, or them, or that, through which offenses come. 
Now, among my own acquaintance is a most excellent 
lady, the balance of whose temperament is such that 
she might well be described as temperamentless ; this 
lady can find in herself no excuse or pardon for that 
which deviates from the straight line. Let us see 
if this is right. It is truly remarked by Mr. Lecky 
that *' there are men whose lives are spent in willing 
one thing and desiring another." A person without 
temperament may only justly judge one with, through 
an education aside from himself. Fernelius observes, 
that ''it is the greatest part of our felicity to be well 
born ; and it were happy for humankind if only such 
parents as are sound of body and mind should be suf- 
fered to marry;" and Lemnius indorses the assertion 
in his observation that " the very affections follow their 
seed, and the malice and bad condition of children are, 
many times, to be wholly imputed to their parents." 
Aristotle relates, in his "Ethics," the case of a man 
who defended himself for beating his father, ''because," 
said he, "my father beat his father, and he again beat 
his ; and he also (pointing to his child) will beat me 



1 64 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

when he comes to be a man, for it runs in our family." 
An ilkistration from higher life is found in the Bruns- 
wick family, of whom Lord Grenville says, ''This house 
always has quarreled, and always will quarrel, from 
generation to generation ; for contention is of their 
blood." ''Passion," says Dr. Elam, "appears to be 
hereditary ; anger, fear, envy, jealousy, libertinage, glut- 
tony, drunkenness, — all are liable to be transmitted to the 
offspring, especially if both parents are alike afflicted ; 
and this, as has often enough been proved, not by force 
of example or education merely, but by direct consti- 
tutional inheritance." To understand this, one has 
but to recognize the outward likeness existing in fami- 
lies to appreciate that the internal may alike conform. 

The hereditary transmission of disease is familiar 
enough to every observer. In hospital service it has 
chanced over and again to myself to witness the most 
sorrowful illustration of such a law, — persons physically 
bad all over, yet from no fault of their own. Has any 
one ever seen parents afflicted with bad teeth transmit 
good ones to their children ? The instances must be 
very rare. Whole families die, one member after the 
other, with hypertrophied hearts or congested brains. 

To pursue such an investigation from its pleasanter 
aspect, one may consider the transmission of what is 
termed genius, the legislative capacity, for example, as 
exhibited in the Adams family, in the two Pitts, the two 
Foxes. The Booth family or the Kemble may illustrate 
it in the dramatic way. In the arts, Thorwaldsen, 
Raphael, Vandyke, Titian, Vernet, all these had an 
hereditary transmission. Tasso, in poetry, and Beetho- 
ven, in music, each descended from a father alike imbued. 



WISE AND OTHERWISE. 



165 



It is not, however, that an individual may seek to 
cover his defect, or fault, in the excuse of its transmis- 
sion. This would certainly not help him to the hap- 
piness of which his ailment is the antagonist. The 
man with bad teeth best saves his aching nerves, not by 
grumbling at his ancestors, but by going to the dentist. 
The man with a transmitted heart-enlargement holds 
himself as good as his neighbor by the avoidance of 
excitement. The irritable encephalon is preserved in 
equilibrium by keeping away from the mid-day sun, 
and noting the pulsation of the arteries. 

A man with a moral vice is to stand guard, as must 
the man with the physical defect ; as the one may pre- 
serve himself, so may the other. True, it is a great 
bother and trouble constantly to be on sentinel duty, 
but it seems about the only way to bar an enemy out, 
and a camp into which the foe finds his way has to bid 
good-by to comfort. Vigilance would therefore seem 
to be the lesser of the two evils. 

A wise man — /. e. a man who would be happy — should 
be lenient to the faults of others, but never to his own. 
One is made better by thinking well of other people, 
but never by thinking too well of himself. In short, I 
may readily condense into the repetition of a single 
line all that has been here written (thus showing not 
only truth, but as well the uselessness of the over-many 
words used), and quote, that '^to do unto others as you 
would that others should do unto you," is the channel 
which avoids the whirlpool on the one side, and the 
rock on the other. 



UTOPIA. 

I TAKE up my pen to-night with the conviction 
that what may be written shall well deserve to be 
called random thoughts. I feel upon me that hazy, 
dreamy mood, which, if not profitable in the indulgence, 
is at least so very pleasant, and in which one finds it 
impossible to fix the attention, for any length of time, 
on any particular fact or fancy. I say such a mood is 
most pleasant ; when it comes to one in this working 
world, he may hesitate to rebuke, but rather, courting 
the fancy, fix himself the more comfortably in his arm- 
chair, and live away the hour in the delicious soul- 
luxury it creates. It may be one cannot entirely satisfy 
himself that hours so spent are excusable, we have all 
grown so very practical. I only know, for my own 
part, that in the extreme love I have of such enjoyment 
I am wont to put off conscience with the assurance that 
the time might be worse employed, and thus quieting 
the voice, forget everything but the blazing coals of my 
office fire, wherein pass and repass the wandering ideals. 

Man is of many moods ; to-day, it may be, the 
boundary of his desires contemplates but the soul-com- 
munion it is permitted him to enjoy with his Maker. 
To-morrow, some world -care comes over him, and 
almost ere he is aware the good spirit has flown, and 
he is of the earth, earthy. 

Who has not known these changes? who has not 
(i66) 



UTOPIA, 



167 



had his equanimity destroyed by some trivial accident, 
or the whole tenor of his reflections changed through 
some unexpected incident ? I, for my part, have many, 
many such changes, many such disturbances. That I 
make the admission is, perhaps, only wherein I differ 
from people who, wisely, or unwisely, as it may be, 
keep their thoughts to themselves. Garrulousness, 
once and awhile at any rate, is good for a man ; it 
relieves him, — works off the excess of brain-secretion, 
as Dr. Maudsley calls it, just as a dose of physic clears 
one of the bile; so I will think, to-night, and scribble, 
and you, gentle reader, can read or not, as you may 
please. 

To-day ushered in spring, — the life-season. Not 
coming in clouds and storm, but with warm sunshine 
came the morning, and with a kind of summer sighing 
went away the twilight. I have been risking a cold the 
livelong day by keeping one of the windows of my 
office open ; it was one of my fancies, I could not resist 
the inclination. A near neighbor, a great lover of 
birds, hung out to-day the cage containing her canaries; 
perhaps it was to hear the birds sing I kept my window 
open. It has always seemed to me, by the way, that 
birds recognize instinctively the very first day of spring, 
— have you never remarked it? They sing and sing as if 
first they had found voice, and were luxuriating in the 
enjoyment of it. 

****** 

I have been sitting the last hour thinking of summer 
coming. Are not summer scenes seducing ? Hills and 
vales, and dark old woods, and nothing to do but enjoy 
them. Ah ! here is the pleasure in the possession of 



1 68 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

comfortable and reasonable means. Money is good, — 
most good in its place ; one may not deny that. 

On an August morning of the last summer I packed 
in my carpet-bag the few articles without which even 
the most unpretending ruralizer may not get along, and, 
with a purse calculated to supply only the plainest 
wants, started off for a visit to the haunts of boyhood. 
Haunts of boyhood ! Is there not a volume in this ex- 
pression ? How is to be pitied the man or woman who, 
born amid brick walls and paved streets, has no memory 
of childhood haunts ! I use the phrase thinkingly. 
Alleys and courts, or widest streets, can have connected 
with them none of the sweet memories which cling 
about the grove, the fishing-place, or the arbored lane. 
The memory of rides in the omnibus, or even in the 
fine -furnished cab, can have entwined with it no 
such freshness as belongs to reminiscences of pony- 
races, or of rides in the slow-moving ox-cart, going 
field ward. 

Hanging over the bookstand, in my office, is a paint- 
ing, representing a favorite home haunt. The piece is 
the merest daub, regarded as a work of art, the whole 
cost being, I believe, not over four or five dollars. 
I was a boy when I made the purchase, and was en- 
abled to give the artist the order, I remember well, by 
denying myself a saddle. Yet, although intrinsically 
the piece is so valueless, although it still retains the 
very bark frame made by my own hands at the time, 
to save further outlay, — it will retain the old frame, 
I imagine, as long as I may live to own it, — I am 
doubtful whether the cost of all my other pictures 
would suffice to buy it. 



UTOPIA. 



169 



The picture represents, or is intended to represent, 
a creek scene. Two great oaks, one on either bank, 
cast their shadows ; the one to the left, back over the 
field, the other, over the quiet stream. Moored to the 
tree on the right bank is seen a little boat, in which sit 
two boys, fishing. The boy in the red jacket I had 
the artist put in for me; the idea, as I remember, greatly 
delighted me at the time. There is a line of fence, too, 
in the foreground of the scene. I recall the trouble I 
had in persuading the painter to sketch a certain odd 
notch there is in one of the rails; at low tide, it was only 
by clambering along this fence that I could get dryshod 
into my boat. In the background of the piece, leaning 
against the sky, is a hill ; a fine old hill it is in reality, 
but in the picture it much more reminds one of a vol- 
cano in a state of eruption ; at least, many times it has 
been so mistaken. There is a pebble shore too, and the 
stakes to which I tied my boat. The wave-ripples, 
which come down even with the bark of the frame, the 
artist has made to the very mould and fashion of what 
they were ; they satisfy me, even now, as much as, on 
canvas, they could be made to satisfy. There is the gable 
of a long, low frame building, which, by looking closely 
between the branches of the greater tree, may be ob- 
served lying to the left of the boat-stakes. A house of 
many memories is that long, low frame to me ; it was a 
boyhood trysting-place, and it is the home whose fire- 
side, next to my own, most invites me. The man who 
now inhabits it was a boy when I was a boy, and we 
were friends then as we are friends now. 

Let me come back to my excursion. Here was the 
retreat I sought. 



lyo 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



Have you ever met, as you have been traveling on 
over the life-journey, the character of man who seems, 
and always has seemed since first you met him, in 
doubt as to how he shall live so as to secure the greatest 
good? My friend is just such a character, and has been 
since he was the merest boy. I call him "Utopia." 
I can scarcely think of him by any other name. He 
has asked me, I think, every time we have met for the 
past thirty years, as to the location of Utopia. " Where 
is it?" he is wont to ask. ''Where is Utopia, Darby?" 
I think I shall never forget the occasion of his first ask- 
ing it ; perhaps the impression has remained the more 
vivid from having connected with it the memory of an 
expose of very marked ignorance. I had to ask what 
he meant by Utopia. It was a fine July morning ; a 
party had been gotten up to take a pleasure-sail on the 
bay, and I, as the friend of Trin, — Trinton is his name, 
— was commissioned to convey to him the invitation. 
Trin's place, or rather his father's place, — it was his 
father's then, — was most conveniently approached from 
ours by a sail up the creek, — the creek represented in 
the picture. As I approached the ford, floated there 
by the tide, — the ford is also partly seen in the back- 
ground of the painting, — I came, most unexpectedly 
and agreeably, upon my friend. As usual, he was in 
reverie. You never could find him idle; that was an 
impossibility, at least I thought so ; if it was not with 
his hands he was working, his brain would be sure to 
be busy. So far distant, on this occasion, were his 
thoughts, that I had dropped my boat-hook into his 
hand before he observed my coming. 

He was a strange fellow, as I have meant to imply. 



UTOPIA. " 171 

Without a word he caught the hook, drawing my boat 
to the rock upon which he sat. '^ I have been thinking, 
Darby," said he, ''thinking the whole morning about 
Utopia. Where is it? and what is it?" 

I answered him that I had never even so much as 
heard of the place. Did he know whether it was in 
Europe, Asia, Africa, or America? 

*' Ay ! that's the rub. Darby. ' Where is it ?' That's 
just what I desire most to find out." 

I suggested that we should go to the house and get 
his atlas. He burst into a laugh, declared I must be a 
fool, or a wit, he knew not which. Ceasing his laugh, 
he drew me to a seat beside him. ''Utopia, Darby," 
— he always commenced his philosophizing speeches 
with a noun, — "Utopia, Darby, is either a reality or 
an idea, — one or the other it can only be ; this is what 
you may term a differential conclusion. Now, which 
is it ? and what is it ? In other words, is Happiness a 
reality or is it a myth ? If a reality, where does it exist ? 
and how?" 

I never had right to claim any particular perceptive 
quickness, but I was no dullard. If given the inkling 
of an idea, I generally managed to catch up the gist of 
the matter about as quickly as others. — "Yes, Utopia; 
well, what about it?" I asked. 

"Reflection is that which distinguishes, or should 
distinguish, man from other animals. A cow crops the 
grass, and in the sensual gratification experienced lies 
her only pleasure. So also may man enjoy the nicely- 
prepared salad, but outside the gratification afforded 
the palate lies a greater ; a sense is given him whereby. 



172 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



with appreciating eyes, he marks the germination of the 
seed, the shooting forth of the tender sprout, and which 
loses him in astonishment as he follows to its comple- 
tion the wonderful miracle. Now, Darby, does the 
cow or the man find the most happiness in the grass?" 
He was trying to work out some such problem as that, 
he said. *'Is happiness to be found in the earthly, or 
in the intellectual ?" 

I declined expressing an opinion upon a subject ap- 
parently so metaphysical in character ; but I told him 
if he would accept an invitation I bore him for a sail 
upon the bay, I could promise him pleasure outside of 
cows and salads. 

''I shall be too glad to go. Darby, — anything for a 
change. And here comes up another matter about which 
I was thinking. Mankind are ever longing for novelty, 
never satisfied. Confine one to the city, he thinks by 
day and dreams by night of green pastures and running 
streams. Place him in the country, give him every 
surrounding of the rural condition, back his thoughts 
go to the exchange and to the warehouse. Let him 
ride upon the waves, straightway he sighs for land ; 
upon the land, and he pants for the excitement of the 
billow, — never satisfied ; grasping, yet ever wanting ; 
obtaining, yet ever seeking." 

I asked him, I remember, what he gained by thinking 
forever of such fudgy things. Why did he not learn 
to live like the rest of us ? 

"Like the rest of you? Well said, Darby. The most 
of you live the same, — are born, eat and drink, die, 
come from nothing, live nothing, die nothing." 

He drew from his pocket a manuscript. 



UTOPIA. 



173 



''I have been writing a sermon, Darby," he said. 
''Will you listen to it?"* 

With the best grace at command, I prepared myself 
for the infliction. I thought a homily quite out of 
place, particularly as I was in a hurry to arrange with 
him for the excursion. 

''Did you ever think, Darby," — he looked straight 
into my eyes, — "ever think how ungratefully man acts 
towards his God, how much we owe God, how depend- 
ent we are upon him for every blessing? And did 
you ever think of the regret which must some day 
surely come of this ingratitude? of the precedents which 
prove it?" 

He unrolled the paper. " My sermon will explain 
itself," he said. 

"Oh that man would praise the Lord for his goodness 
and for his wonderful works to the children of men!" 

It was the text. 

"Well, go on," I said, my attention, which had 
gone with a piece of floating bark, being attracted back, 
after the lapse of several minutes, by the silence which 
followed. He was in one of his reveries. "Go on," 
I repeated, nudging his elbow. 

He straightened out the pages, which had rolled 
themselves together. 

" God have compassion on us, ingrates that we are !" 

I felt inclined to find fault with this very first line ; I 
was no ingrate. He read on : 

* The author would suggest that in a waste-paper box he has seen 
something very hke this sermon. The reader may also have met 
with it. 



174 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSIC TAN. 



"Breathing his pure air, drinking from his refresh- 
ing springs, basking in his delicious sunshine, and yet 
forgetting (conceal it, oblivion), forgetting even 
thanks. 

"Father, spare us the so richly-merited contempt. 
Oh that man could understand and appreciate his de- 
pendent situation ! poor, weak, helpless being ! plant- 
ing and watering, taking to himself the credit of the 
increase, living and enjoying, congratulating self. 

" Look out over your possessions, Americans. A 
territory almost boundless in extent, fringed on the one 
side by the cloud-capped waves of the Atlantic, girded 
on the other by the more gently rolling waters of the 
Pacific ; embracing within its bounds almost every 
variety of climate, from the frigid, to the soft, volup- 
tuous tropical ; producing the hardy fruits of the North, 
the refreshing pulps of the sunny South, the grace- 
ful maize, the flowering cotton ; abounding in ores 
of every description, from the stubborn iron to the 
glittering gold ; minerals, from the homely quartz to 
the brilliant, sparkling diamond ; producing in the 
richest abundance everything calculated to promote our 
greatness as a nation and our happiness as a people. 
Do we look out over nature, our eyes are greeted by 
vast, unending panoramas, of unsurpassed magnificence; 
our glorious sky, in its ever-changing beauty, rivals the 
descriptions of half-fairyland Italy. Our echoing hills, 
our valleys flowing with oil and wine, our rivers rolling 
in majesty oceanward, our boundless forests, flowery 
meads, and grassy knolls, our home joys, the proud, 
earth-defying wavings of our never-humbled flag, our 
productive soil, our own intrinsic nobility, — all, all 



UTOPIA. 175 

combine to give us might and happiness in our single- 
ness!" Pause. 

I looked up, thinking he claimed some special atten- 
tion. Unheeding, he read on : 

" You remember how, long years ago, in the Mediter- 
ranean Sea, bloomed a country, famous and happy, and 
great as our own noble land, the favored of God, the 
envied of man. Music, and flowers, and sunlight were 
there ; singing brooks and waving forests, caroling birds 
and twilight whisperings. And might was there ; great- 
ness sat enthroned in classic grandeur, art and science 
crowned loftiest pinnacles. Nations, lost in wonder- 
ment and admiration, bowed, hailing her mistress. 
' Happy people !' you exclaim. Follow. 

"In forgetfulness of the upholding cornerstone, came 
to that people pride and dissatisfaction, presumption 
and ingratitude ; soon upon the waves floated the flags 
of her armaments, over the land spread the assassins of 
her ambition ; and now, in scenes of intervention and 
triumph, conquest and tyranny, she branded herself 
'Ingrate.' Follow on. 

"The reckoning was coming ; the eye of an outraged 
Deity was upon her. His ear heard ; angels, with won- 
dering faces and astonished souls, looked on, and then, 
in pity, — in very pity, — as they beheld a people weep, 
threw over the scene a pall of blackness, enshrouding 
it in the obscurity of the past. Yes, Rome was the 
pall ; and Greece, — ancient Greece, — with her archi- 
tectural beauties, her perfection in the arts and sciences, 
the wonder of the world, of her well-governed and 
rejoicing people, mingled her atoms with the things of 
the past. Follow on. 



176 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

''God would have on earth a pre-eminent people, — 
a people whose content, whose charity, whose elevation 
might live an example to the world. Rome was chosen ; 
from her seven hills light went out over all Europe, 
illumined Asia, drove part of the blackness from the 
borders of Africa; and then Rome — chosen, elevated 
Rome — forgot God, — God, the caretaker of the hea- 
then as of the Christian ; God, the cornerstone of the 
fabric of good will to all men. Soon came interven- 
tion and dictation. Earth looked upon the legions, 
and unresisting bent a powerless neck. Again was the 
pall cast ; from mountain fastnesses poured horde 
after horde of the ferocious Vandals, scattering to the 
winds of heaven the remnants of Roman glory. Fol- 
low on. 

"Are not the reverberations of the drums, which 
sounded the pas de charge on the plains of Austerlitz, 
still ringing in our ears? Cannot we recall, word for 
word, the ordre du Jour which excited to the highest 
pitch of enthusiasm the brave army of the tricolor ? Can 
we not remember how, but a few short years back, 
France towered to the very heavens, crowning a pyra- 
mid of skulls? Alas, the star of her brightness has 
set, and she, too, has given place for a something 
higher to come. 

''Oh that men might cultivate the divine within them 
sufficiently to appreciate the blessings with which God 
has surrounded them, and, appreciating, find their only 
ambition in the works of his will ! The precedents, 
the world-awing precedents, — give us, O Father, to 
understand their teachings, — lessons taught by the sacri- 
fice of millions, by the demolition of greatness, by the 



UTOPIA. 



177 



annihilation of human hopes, made necessary by the 
conduct of the destroyed. 

*'And we — now are we at our looms, and costly 
fabrics clothe us. We are in our fields, and plenty 
springs up about us. We are in our homes, and love 
crowns the tempting feast. We are in our halls, and 
eloquence steals away our doubts. We are in our 
colleges, and science instructs us. Upon the sea we 
float, and our vessels carry the golden sands of Ophir. 
Oh, how we should praise the Lord for his goodness and 
for his wonderful works ! 

"And yet, fools that we are, we seem to have little 
or no sense of a life philosophy. 

"A dog passing over a brook, seeing the meat he 
carried doubled by reflection, let go that he held, grasp- 
ing at the shadow, and lost all. 

"An Arnold, holding through the faith of esteeming 
countrymen a noble fortress, seeing needed gold re- 
flected, let go that he held, grasping at the shadow, and 
lost all. 

"An Aaron Burr, possessed of fame, riches, and 
honor, seeing from the great Southwest reflected an 
empire, let go that he held, grasping at the shadow, 
and lost all. 

"A mother-country, possessing colonies of great 
value, seeing reflected, through the enchantment of 
distance, a seeming advantage of stamp and other acts, 
although carrying in her treasury ample equivalents, let 
go that she held, grasping at the shadow, and lost all. 

" And so the world is teeming with precedents, great 
and startling ones for those in high places, ordinary 
and common ones for those in low places." 
12 



178 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

He turned several pages ; he must have observed my 
growing restlessness. 

"A certain rich man, dissatisfied with possessions 
enough for thousands, built to himself greater store- 
houses, reared higher barns, and then, with his own 
and the wealth of others, sat him down to take his ease. 
In his hand was no charity, in his heart no mercy ; he 
lived for self. Law, in very disgust at his self-love and 
unbrotherly greediness, in disgust at selfishness dis- 
gracing to brutes, let drop the pall, and his place was 
vacant. 

"A certain nobleman, having vast estates, called 
his heirs together, to each giving great possessions, — 
enough for every want, and more ; then, blessing, left 
them, counseling with his last words that each should 
do to the other as he would have done to himself in 
return. 

''But soon the strongest slew the weaker, amalga- 
mating theirs with his. But the nobleman, when he 
heard of it, what did he ? Dropped the pall, and the 
conqueror was conquered." 

As my friend read the last word of his sermon, he 
crumpled together the manuscript and threw it far out 
on the stream. 

Silently we watched the receding paper. 

" So goes life," at length he exclaimed, as the paper 
disappeared behind a little promontory. ''As a leaf- 
boat thrown by the mountain-breeze into the rivulet, 
dancing, leaping, laughing, we start ; around the tree- 
roots we play, over obstructing pebbles we spring, by 
the rock-side we eddy. Then, still dancing, leaping, 
laughing, down the hillside we go, joying in the sun- 



UTOPIA. 1 79 

beam, joying in the moonbeam, joying in everything. 
This is boyhood ; alas, when the base is reached the 
mountain is passed forever. 

"Next we meet the wood stream, — the placid wood 
stream, youth. We go more calmly now, much more 
calmly, but not less happily ; this is the time of hope, 
of looking forward, of love. We linger not long 
here, however ; we would stay, but the current resists 
all effort to stem it. We look wistfully out over the 
shore ; we think. If we might but lay ourselves in the 
shade, and watch forever other life-boats passing. We 
even try if we may not do this, but the current drives 
us on. So, contenting ourselves, we joy in each pass- 
ing beauty, live entirely in a present ; thus, to the river 
we pass. 

''The waves and winds of this greater stream dash 
frightfully our frail bark; with redoubled energy we 
resist the tide, but it is in vain. Onward we go, — on- 
ward and outward. The stream of manhood has us 
upon its bosom ; if we would keep up, the waves and 
the winds must be struggled with. 

''The ocean is reached; out on its great waves we 
go, — we cannot but go. There are divers winds here. 
One, if happily we catch it, shall waft us to a haven of 
delight and safety. Another blows towards the north, 
— the cold and biting north. The maelstrom is there, and 
if within the circles we drift, around we shall go, around 
— powerless around — and — down, down — lost." 

In the kitchen of my friend's house is the usual great 
fireplace of the plantation-house. The picture of it 
comes just now most vividly before me. There was a 



1 80 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

boy, Charlie, on the place, a kind of guard-servant and 
friend to Trin. A great dog, too, connects himself 
always with the reminiscence, a half Newfoundland, 
half mongrel, yet, withal, a most sagacious brute. 

This old and roomy fireplace was the evening retreat 
of my friend Charlie and the dog June, — the insepar- 
ables, I called them. I believe you might have looked 
here for them with success almost any evening of the 
whole year, for, if it were summer, the piled holly 
boughs made the place attractive; while in winter, — 
ah ! truly on winter nights was it a retreat to be courted. 
At either end, crossing the hearth, was an oaken bench. 
Well carved and cut were these benches : Charlie, the 
servant-boy, had much facility in this direction ; it was 
his habit to carve while his master philosophized. 

As I think of the fires that were wont to blaze upon 
that hearth, I cannot but recall how apt I was to specu- 
late on the amount of wood unnecessarily consumed. 
Charlie would have burned a forest if thereby Trin's 
pleasure might have been enhanced. 

I was sitting one evening in Charlie's corner of the 
chimney. Trin sat opposite. Charlie and June lay, 
both of them, soundly sleeping, side by side, upon the 
floor. "Darby," exclaimed my friend, suddenly look- 
ing up, — ''Darby, do you recall the question I asked 
at the ford?" 

Our thoughts happened for once to be running in the 
same channel. I remembered it well, I answered him, 
and was at the moment thinking of it. The Sunday be- 
fore I had been much struck with an expression uttered 
in a Quaker meeting held in a neighboring village. I 
repeated the words as nearly as I could recall them, 



UTOPIA. 



i8i 



suggesting that therein might be found an answer to 
the question. The exact words of the Friend I find 
have quite gone from me. 

The expression, however, I well remember, seemed 
to strike him. He did not tell me so, but because he 
spoke not I knew it ; it was his habit, when impressed, 
to drop his head upon his hand and go off into a reverie. 

Finding I had an advantage, I hastened to pursue 
it. '-'If one," I told him, "situated as he was, could 
not be happy, the cause might be found only by looking 
inward. An only child, sole heir to a lucrative and 
most beautiful estate, l^orn to- " 

He would finish the sentence, he said, interrupting 
me. ''Born to a position of ignoble ease and selfish 
enjoyment ; nothing to do but to eat, drink, and sleep, 
to live like a brute — and — and to die, and be buried, 
and to rot like a brute. It was indeed glorious, glori- 
ous ! — was it not?" 

He had made up his mind to go to Yale, he said. 
Happiness was a thing graduated by the ability to com- 
prehend and the power to execute. He would get soul- 
wealth as already he had earth-wealth; would study 
and become a man, and, ranking with men, would 
play a man's part. At least, as a spirit of unrest pos- 
sessed him, he would seek to quiet it. 

Then, again, he was impressed, he said, with a spirit 
of action. Even were 'he satisfied to rest in the luxury 
to which he had been born, would he not be guilty of 
a waste of life? He believed so; he could not satisfy 
himself as to any peculiar right possessed by him to 
while away time idly while so many of his fellow-men 
were crying for help. 



1 82 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

Did I remember the parable of the talents ? he asked. 
As then, so now ; it becomes every man to put his 
money at usance. If ten talents are his, he must in- 
crease them other ten ; if he possess but five, other five 
will be expected. Feeling this, how might he dare act 
the part of the '' One talented," how might he excuse 
himself when the reckoning should be demanded ? 

It was beyond his comprehension, he said, how the 
generality of mankind live as they do ; it seemed to him 
that life was treated as so much waste matter, broken 
up, cast aside, trodden under foot ; not one in ten 
thousand seemed to have the slightest appreciation of 
the Wherein true life consisted. Each hurried along as 
if to gain the morrow was the object, as if the present 
held nothing. It was a truth that even the creative 
might of God failed to attract admiration ; had He not 
conceived and created a paradise, and in admiration 
of his work called it good? Yet, man passed it by 
unheeding, or, if perchance noticing, only rolled up 
his hypocritical eyes, pronouncing anathemas upon it, 
— upon the world, deemed by God so beautiful. Why 
were men so blind ? He hoped Heaven would gift him 
with the desire and with the ability to work the miracle 
of opening their eyes. 

Did not this last expression conflict, just a little, with 
the doctrines in the sermon he had read me? I asked. 
In the one was inculcated content, here he favored 
action. 

I was dull of comprehension, he answered. My 
objection seemed scarcely worthy repl}. Did I not 
perceive the one referred to unwarranted energy, the 
other, to unholy sloth ? 



UTOPIA. 183 

So my friend, ''seeking Utopia," went to Yale, and 
four years — four, to me, very long years — separated us. 

How often, during the slow-moving months of sepa- 
ration, did my mind revert to him, and what I was 
disposed to view as his peculiarities ! Often would I 
wonder what he should be when again we met ; if his 
Utopia should be found. Many and many a time, in 
my better moods, have I offered supplications for his 
welfare ; that his happiness might be secured, his search 
crowned with success. 

****** 

One evening, a week perhaps after his return, we 
were standing together upon the veranda of his house, 
when, lifting my arm, he placed it within his own, 
inviting me to a stroll. He wanted to talk with me, 
he said. He desired to compare present views with 
some he had entertained four years back. " They 
were Quixotic, Darby, very. I make the acknowledg- 
ment freely ; that is, they were Quixotic as compared 
with things as they exist, as all reforms are Quixotic. 
Christ himself was Quixotic, and for centuries the 
world laughed at his disciples as so many Sancho 
Panzas ; Quixotic, because he preached good will in 
place of hatred, peace instead of war ; because, know- 
ing the beaten track to be the wrong one, he stepped 
aside, marking out a better. 

''Four years ago," he continued, "I apportioned to 
myself the task of teaching men how to live. I thought 
to be a reformer. Convinced of the truthfulness of my 
philosophy, I would preach against the prostitutions 
of the times, and inveigh against its follies. And this, 
this present. Darby, was to have been the starting- 



1 84 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

time. Strange how circumstances and relations alter 
one's views. I had not then made up my mind to pass 
as a' sort of harmless, half-insane person, as a fanatic. 
Indeed, I had not taken into the account that such 
position is necessarily entailed on the man who dares 
step from the highway over which trudge the masses. 

*'See," he went on, 'Miow the Spiritualist of the 
present day is denounced and ridiculed.* Why? Be- 
cause they who mock know him as a fool ? Nothing 
of the kind. The mockers are, as a general thing, by 
odds the greater fools ; they mock at assertions which 
they have not the independence to investigate, and, of 
course, not the capability to disprove; mocking, be- 
cause ridicule is the only weapon they may handle. 

*' Suppose," continued he, "that in the averments 
made by this sect exists truth, that now has arrived 
that cycle in which such communication as it teaches is 
being permitted, is it not startling, most startling, to 
think that through unbelief we deny ourselves the ad- 
vantages and happiness of such communion ? and is it 
not a terrible reflection that our disbelief drives away 
souls torn from us rudely by death, and who now stand 
mournfully at the door of our hearts, knocking longingly 
for entrance?" 

"But," I answered him, "I have heard you yourself 
ridicule the doctrines of Swedenborg." 

"True; because the chain of prejudice that" binds 
others bound me. I laughed, as ridiculers mostly laugh, 
meaningless, — as parrots laugh." 

"But the doctrine is absurd." 

* Referring to the Swedenborgian. 



UTOPIA 185 

*' Possibly; yet the Bible, and, besides ihe Bible, all 
nature, teaches the omnipresence of God ; as well are 
we taught that the immortal part of man is an emana- 
tion from — 2, part of— the Deity. How, then, can the 
whole be omnipresent without the parts being in like 
condition?" 

I knew little about the matter, and cared less to 
know, I answered him. I thought that possibly the 
less people should worry their brains about such things 
the better it might be for them. We had no right to 
look into futurity ; we should be content with the con- 
dition in which God has placed us. 

''True, Darby, most true; we should not ride in 
carriages, because Providence has provided us with legs. 
We may not familiarize ourselves with hygiene, because 
Providence intends we shall sicken and die. We have 
no right to lighten burdens through machine labor, 
because law designs that by the sweat of one's brow is 
his bread to be earned. See how inconsistent we are, 
— what fools we prove ourselves." 

I asked if at Yale he had been converted to the views 
of Swedenborg. 

" It has nothing to do with the consideration. I only 
alluded to this in example. It is of the world we are 
speaking. I remarked, four years back, my intention of 
working for the good of my fellows. I have now to re- 
mark my knowledge of a peculiarity existing with the 
people which points the finger of ridicule at him who 
suggests anything for its improvement. All change must 
come to the common mind through a general, and not a 
special, voice, through an experience of good or evil. 
He who runs ahead of this experience, who philoso- 



1 86 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

phizes, and from his philosophy draws deductions in 
advance of his time, will best preserve his dignity and 
secure his comfort by enjoying alone the advantage. 
Let him preach to the world his doctrine, he gets for 
his pains little but contempt. My Utopia here has 
vanished, Darby; I must seek it elsewhere." 

''You had better, then, look at home," I suggested. 

''And do cheerfully what the hand findeth to do; 
that sounds quite reasonable. But what finds my hand 
to do which shall satisfy? What may still the spirit of 
unrest which so urges me to an unexplained labor ? I 
must do something; Heaven point out to me the path, 
that I may step into it." 

His father owned at the time some fifty male slaves, 
full seven-eighths of whom were unable to read for 
themselves a single line. Was there not here a great 
work? I inquired. Suppose he should employ the 
education he had gained to improve and enlighten 
twenty or thirty of the youngest of these men, and, on 
their coming into his possession, free and send them 
missionaries to their countrymen. I could conceive, I 
told him, of no greater or worthier work, or one that, 
in its influence, might be more important, whether 
viewed in connection with the affairs of time, or with 
the things of all life. 

He turned away, unheeding, or not noticing, the 
suggestion. 

I ventured to continue the subject: it was to the 
designer and originator of a great work, rather than to 
the laborers who executed the task, that belonged, 
or should belong, the credit. And surely he doing, 
without whose consent or power nothing might or 



UTOPIA. 187 

would be done, should receive, as undoubtedly he 
would deserve, all reward, whether it should be of con- 
science or estate. 

One of the continents of the world, I remarked, 
lay, as for ages it had lain, in the darkness of barbar- 
ism. Its people, having no light, elevated but little 
above the beasts surrounding them, demanded, by the 
right of a common humanity, an assistance which should 
enable them to emerge from such a depressed condition. 
This assistance might only come from the enlightened 
and more favored. Was not this worthy his attention ? 
Would it not be a glorious task to light the torch whose 
flame, radiating and reflected, should dispel this dark- 
ness, and light up with rays of intellectual brightness 
the land so long desolate? 

*'We will defer a consideration of the subject till 
some other time," he said, interrupting me. We de- 
scended in silence the hill, on the summit of which we 
had been standing. 

*'I think I will study medicine. Darby. What do 
you think of the idea?" We had walked fully a mile 
before he spoke this. 

It was the profession I had some thought of for my- 
self, I answered him ; but, so far, my ideas of the mat- 
ter were, I feared, rather indistinct. 

^' I believe I will study. Darby, and, settling in some 
great city, devote freely my fortune and abilities to 
the aid of the needy." His face lighted up with enthu- 
siasm. ''This is it, this is it. Darby. I feel it as in- 
spiration. I believe I have at last found Utopia." 

''I trust so," I said. Perhaps my response might 
have been more hearty, for he turned upon me as if 



i88 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSIC TAN. 

the words had been ice. I was, however, not entirely 
unread as to the clinical advantages enjoyed in cities by 
the poor. I knew that even as we spoke, existed, very 
fully systematized, the noble charity now so freely sup- 
ported by our different medical institutions, — a charity 
which permits no one to suffer where the aid of the 
finest talent and erudition may assist. 

I may be permitted to pay the tribute of my regard 
to this cause. 

I premised, it will be remembered, that to-night I 
would write as memories came about me. Let me, then, 
for a single moment digress. 

In most great cities are now to be found those silent 
charities known as Clinics, supported almost entirely, if 
not wholly, by college faculties, or practitioners of the 
healing art. These clinics are divided into specialties; 
medical, surgical, obstetrical, ophthalmic, and others. 
Demands made at the several institutions will secure to 
the poor patient such services as may be needed, from the 
very highest of the faculty. Operations are performed, 
medicine and attendants furnished, the closest consid- 
eration given to every want, and all without the slight- 
est idea or hope of reward. It is charity, the offspring 
of duty, and, like the good Samaritan, pours balm into 
the wounds of every wayside sufferer, asking not 
whether he be friend or foe, Jew or Samaritan. 

Perhaps the amount of time, means, and personal 
exertion expended in a single year in these services 
might scarcely be realized by the. people. It is, I am 
very sure, far beyond any estimate ordinarily enter- 
tained. May the ''heart-warmth" engaged in this noble 
work never grow old ! The poor owe to the clinical 



UTOPIA. 189 

system a debt which their warmest gratitude alone may- 
repay. That people of means are found not unfre- 
quently to take advantage of this good, designed alone 
for the really poor, is unfortunately the objection to 
the system. How it is to be obviated is a question 
now receiving attention. 

I said that I answered my friend coolly, and that my 
indifference seemed as ice to his enthusiasm. How- 
ever, the October of the succeeding year witnessed our 
matriculation together into the University. I pass 
rapidly on. 

Half the first course had not been completed before 
I perceived that, in the face of things as they existed, 
the new-found Utopia of my friend was vanishing. 
The free service which at first had loomed up as the 
embodiment of charity, was rapidly sinking to a level 
with the many others apiece with it. I felt that soon 
again he would need to renew the search for his ideal. 

I concluded right. He started his queries on the 
voyage home. We were standing, the first evening out, 
upon the after-deck of the packet on which we were 
sailing, watching the receding land. "There, it is 
gone," he exclaimed, as the last point faded into the 
horizon, ''the land is gone; the Utopia it promised is 
gone with it. Ah, Darby, is there on earth no Utopia?" 

I repeated to him the words of the Quaker. 

"True, true." He droi)ped his head, as I have re- 
marked was his habit. I left him to his musings, and 
walked to the bow of the vessel. 

****** 

My friend went not back to college. I did not ex- 
pect he would. It was not medical education he sought. 



IQO ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

but a something, — a Utopia, — an idea. He found not 
this : why should he have returned ? 

I was surprised one afternoon^ some two years later, 
to have placed in my hands by our college janitor a 
letter from Trinton. It was quite an event ; for, while 
we were the best of friends, such was his unconquer- 
able repugnance to letter-writing that the receipt of 
a letter from him was a matter of such rarity as to be 
worthy of note. This letter informed me of his inten- 
tion to invest a portion of his fortune in mercantile 
pursuits. *' I need excitement," he wrote. *'I con- 
clude that without some busy object whereupon to 
exhaust the activity of my mind I can never expect to 
quit myself of the spirit of unrest which so distresses 
me. This is all I need ; I am convinced of it. I start 
up as one awakened from a dream ; I have dreamt too 
long. The mass of mankind find content in a plodding 
routine. I have reviled this plodding too severely. 
As others seem happy while I am miserable, the others 
must be right, I wrong. I will work with the rest." 

I dropped the letter in very surprise. What could 
thus more greatly than ever have deceived my friend ? 
Merchandise, indeed ! what could such a one as he do 
with merchandise? The idea was absurd. A person 
of his dreamy character to enter a pursuit demanding 
for success such concentration of energy, great and 
continued earnestness, and unwavering industry — if I 
had. not been so annoyed I could have laughed outright 
at the folly. 

''Of course," continued he, ''you will wonder at 
this determination. I assume that you will. You will 
condemn, perhaps: this, however, would fall on my 



UTOPIA, igi 

ear unheeded. I must begin to live. Life is rapidly 
hastening from me, and as yet I have accomplished no- 
thing, absolutely nothing. The reflection almost drives 
me to despair. Is it, — I ask myself the question a hun- 
dred times each day, — is it to be thus until the end ? 
May I do nothing at all? is there no work for me? 

" I went to Yale to find my work, — to the university; 
but did I find it ? I am here to-day apparently farther 
from the object than ever. I sometimes feel like casting 
the blame on God. Why was I created with this sus- 
ceptibility? Why am I haunted by this constant desire 
to work, and nothing given me to do ? I am never at 
ease for a single moment. Do I lie down in sleep, there 
come to me visions of distress, calling for relief. Do 
I walk, or drive, or hunt, condemnation of the hours 
I am misspending seems to look on me from every 
cloud. You ask me, then, why the calls are unheeded. 
Oh, I don't know ; I don't know. It is the charge of 
vacillation, perhaps, which I fear, — the dread that it 
will be said of me, as it is said of every man who steps 
from the path, he is a little insane, — a fanatic, — an 
enthusiast, — a dreamer. I find I have no independ- 
ence, none at all. Pray for me. Darby, pray for me ; I 
feel like one around whose lips the waters of Lethe 
are bubbling." 

I shut the letter. I had no desire to read farther. 
Poor Trin ! how few comprehend such a character as 
his ! I understood, however, and appreciated him. 
I think I am skilled in such direction of the vagarious. 
How many, who in these pages shall commune with the 
sentiments he utters, are in nature akin with him ! You 
yourself have felt all this, perhaps still feel it. The 



1 9 2 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

better spirit strives, and long has striven, for suprem- 
acy. You have, time and again, caught up the armor, 
ahiiost determined to buckle it on. You recall many a 
Sunday morning, when, in religious mood, you have 
walked towards the church, determined that the day 
was to witness your regeneration ; you would be found, 
thereafter, very regular in your attendance, — so you 
vowed to yourself. You remember how, feeling thus, 
you have gone into the family-pew, and a shower of 
grace has seemed to descend upon you. You have won- 
dered why so long you cheated yourself of such se- 
renity. So all day Monday have you retained the 
fervor ; Tuesday and Wednesday it has lingered with 
you, but with the Thursday came a temptation. You 
were not strong enough ; you faltered. The next Sun- 
day, the pew, as usual, was vacant. You spent the day 
uncomfortably at home, or, perhaps, whistled your dog 
to your side, and, taking up your hat, wandered off, 
trying to get away from yourself 

You have thought much of life ; about what it is to 
live. Fully have you satisfied yourself that the mere 
provision for the body is, or should be, the least part 
of a man's concern. There have dawned upon your 
comprehension the requirements of a higher life, — the 
soul life. You have asked yourself a thousand times 
what you should do; long have you been wanting 
to do something. You wonder why it is you should 
not long ago have been at work ; why you have been so 
wavering. You feel a kind of contempt for your weak- 
ness. There comes, however, buoying you up, a sud- 
den vow of resolution. You will be weak no longer. 
You will be a man in the sight of Heaven, as you are a 



UTOPIA. 



193 



man in the sight of your fellows. You will commence 
the coming hour with a good work. So, under the in- 
spiration, you start forth, your heart all warmth, your 
energy all ablaze. 

You go, perhaps, to some miserable dwelling you 
may have encountered in your walks. You think it 
would be a noble commencement to regenerate the in- 
mates of such a tumble-down place ; you have no doubt 
the people are of a piece with their dwelling ; you knock 
at the door, and, in answer to a rough greeting, pass in. 
It is a very forbidding-looking place, you think. Yet the 
fervor which has so far accompanied you deserts you not. 
You hesitate for a moment as to how you shall broach 
the subject of your visit. It strikes you suddenly that 
the bodies of these people need food and raiment quite 
as much as the soul — perhaps more. At any rate, you 
conceive that it would be useless to talk of philosophical 
comforts in the face of such earthly distress ; the reflec- 
tion undecides you as to whether or not you shall speak 
the words of your message. Finally, however, you con- 
clude that it would be as well to return home, and, 
providing the needed comforts, send them, to return 
yourself at some more suitable time. So, dropping a 
few dollars into the hands of a wan- looking woman you 
take to be the mother, you go away. 

You do not return, however, as you had contem- 
plated. A few days, and your mood has changed. A 
kind of selfish indifference has come over you. You 
think it better becomes a man to attend to business, 
leaving the gentle duties of life to the attention of 
women. If you find the money for your wife's chari- 
ties, it is quite enough. You subscribe, also, to at least 
13 



194 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

half a dozen funds. You are sure that these people will 
not be permitted to suffer while so many are ready to 
assist. If the people do want, you are sure it can only 
be from fault of their own. So, stultifying your better 
nature, you go back to your usual round, to continue in 
it until another good mood shall come pleading. 

Your business engagements permit of little leisure. 
You do not get much time to think. You come home, 
however, some evening rather earlier than usual. You 
have felt all day disgusted with the world, and with 
the things of the world. Nothing has gone right 
with you. There is a feeling stealing over you de- 
nouncing the vanity of your life. You feel the denun- 
ciation to be very just. You draw your chair to the 
grate, and fall into a reverie. What is the use, you 
think, of toiling and battling for that which is truly 
neither meat nor drink? It comes up very vividly that 
life, as it is generally spent, is but so much waste. You 
wonder at the goodness which bears so patiently with 
the ingratitude of your kind. The parable of the fig- 
tree comes before your mind. Your thoughts revert 
immediately to yourself. You have lived thirty, forty, 
fifty years, and never yet bas there been fruit gathered 
from your branches. You shrink involuntarily, as if 
you feared the descending axe. You ajre lost in aston- 
ishment that you have been spared so long. You think 
yourself the most ungrateful of ingrates, much more 
ungrateful than other men, because, judging from your 
constant compunctions, you doubt if other men have 
been watered and cultured with the care and love which 
have attended you. 

A very despairing mood comes upon you. You feel 



UTOPIA. ic,^ 

that you are, or should be, outside the pale of the 
deserving ; it is of no use to make new resolutions ; 
you remember how weak you are. Have you not a 
hundred times resolved and re-resolved, and a hun- 
dred times broken the resolutions ? What, you ask your- 
self, is the use of fresh vows? You doubt if it would 
not be but as casting insult in the face of God. You 
ought, like the fig-tree, to be cut down. You almost 
wish you could be, that you might know the worst. 
Why should you longer cumber the ground ? You will 
never bear fruit, never; you are convinced of this. 
You are in very great distress at your condition. You 
offer up a very earnest prayer. Why will God and 
your good angel not help you ? You wonder, as the 
mood changes a little, why you should be denied the 
strength you so need and so crave. You want to be 
useful ; it is your highest desire ; but unless there is 
interposed some special providence, you might as well 
give up the battle. The spirit is willing, most willing, 
but the flesh is weak. So you think on, think and 
think, until, slumber coming over your senses, imper- 
ceptibly and by degrees the thoughts are shut out, and 
thus the good mood is gone, — gone as it came. 

There come to you also times when you are very 
ambitious, very desirous of accomplishing some great 
and worthy work. You read of men, mighty men, 
who, comet-like, have blazed over and illumined the 
life-sky, attracting all eyes, exciting all admiration. 
You do not see why you also may not so shine ; it would 
be glorious, lofty, noble, you think. 

So, measuring yourself with the precedents afforded, 
you plume your wings for the flight : you will fly to the 



196 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

pinnacle, you think. In contemplation of the coming 
success, your soul seems lighting up with a celestial fire. 
You feel that it begins to blaze, that it has entered the 
arteries of your body, and is pouring its undiluted 
streams upon your brain. 

You catch up your pen ; the moment of inspiration 
shall not be lost. You write, write ; words crowd for 
utterance. You are writing immortal lines, — lines that 
shall glow brighter and brighter, as the eyes that first 
gloated over them may wax dimmer and dimmer, — as 
the hand that penned them shall fall more and more 
into dust. You firmly believe this : at length you are 
accomplishing a life-work. '' Happy me ! happy me !" 
you exclaim. 

Rapidly, and still more rapidly, you write ; the ex- 
citement upon you is increasing to absolute distraction. 
At length you throw down the pen. You may not add 
a single word: the strain, the song, is perfect. You 
are deliriously happy. You feel you must hasten out 
into the broadness of space ; the circumference of the 
room wherein you write seems crowding you. So out 
you go; every one you meet recognizes instinctively, 
you feel, the inspiration that was upon you. 

Rapidly you pass from the close streets into the open 
freeness of the country. You must move quickly; you 
are far too excited to remain still even for a single 
moment. The whole morning you walk, — the whole 
day, — and night has settled down over the lanes and 
fields ere you find yourself sufficiently composed to re- 
turn to your home. 

You feel, as you seat yourself before the tempting 
supper, very tired, very hungry; the long walk has 



UTOPIA, 



197 



quite animalized you. The evening, however, has in 
store a treat which shall refresh you. You may not 
overlook this. You will draw up the arm-chair, you 
say, and in reading over your manuscript re-enjoy the 
ecstasy of the morning. Happy anticipation ! it helps 
even to appease your appetite. You can but hurry to 
the treat. 

On the table, by the side of your precious production, 
your servant has thrown one of the so-called literary 
papers. You will read just a little in this first ; it will 
serve, you think, to sharpen the appetite for what is to 

come. Your eye falls on a poem by Marie . You 

pass to an essay by Wilhelm , to a moral story 

by Roberto . Noms de plume, attached to wishy- 
washy nonsense, meet your eyes wherever on the page 
they rest. You throw down the paper in sheer dis- 
gust. You think how more than strange it is that people 
should spend precious time in laboring to exhibit them- 
selves as fools. 

You begin to lose confidence in the heaven-inspired 
effusion of the morning. An impression comes stealing 
upon you that, with the others, you also may have been 
doing what you could to make yourself ridiculous. 
Your own article is signed ''Raphael;" it seems, this 
last at least, very absurd. What could your friends do 
but smile, if they knew that you, the steady merchant 
of their acquaintance, were ''Raphael," — neglecting 
ledgers and day-books to poetize ? Confidence in your 
call is going very fast. 

You unroll the manuscript, however. It is strange, 
but it starts not with the fire of the morning. You 
wonder what has become of the vitality that existed in 



198 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

it. You have read only half through the page when 
you lay it down. There is a growing conviction that 
you are of a class with the Maries, the Wilhelms, and 
the Robertos. You take up the paper and cast it into 
the fire. You laugh a laugh of contempt at your 
weakness, and thus, as the paper turns to ashes, your 
aspirations turn to air. The mood is gone, — gone as 
the many others have gone. 

Do you recognize these mind phases? You will not, 
then, blame my friend. You will not ridicule his search 
after Utopia. He lives as you live, as I live, only in a 
more intensified degree. 

As you live, as I live, that is, always about to do 
something, — never accomplishing anything. So I am 
sure he will live. As you and I, so he, so all of us, will 
sink down into a common dust, leaving perhaps no 
sign. Heaven forgive us, but it does seem that all our 
strivings and battlings are about as the strivings and 
battlings of the moats in a sunbeam, — coming to as 
little. 

I need not tell you that, within a year, my friend 
left, at great pecuniary loss, his business venture. You 
can only have anticipated this. Neither need I trace 
his various changes ; they were many. Over the earth 
he has wandered, a spirit of unrest ; has ever sought, 
nev6r found ; and now, with Richter's old man, he 
looks back wistfully over the rich harvest-fields of life, 
out of which he has brought nothing. 



IN THE COUNTRY. 

^^ T N my garden I spend my days, in my library I 
X spend my nights," says Alexander Smith. "My 
interests I divide between my geraniums and my books. 
With the flower I am in the present ; with the book I 
am in the past. I go into my library, and all history 
unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the 
world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it; 
while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of night- 
ingales and to the laugh of Eve. The garden I love 
more than any place on earth. I like to pace its grav- 
eled walks ; to sit in the moss-house, which is warm and 
cozy as a bird's nest, and wherein twilight dwells at 
mid-day. My garden, with its silence, and the pulses 
of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, 
affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, 
and gazes at me wistfully through the bars. Among 
my flowers and trees nature takes me into her own 
hands, and I breathe freely as the first man." 

Have you read, my good reader, Alexander Smith's 
garden-smelling book '' Dreamthorp" ? No? Well, 
you know what Alexander Smith is ; his book is what 
he is. Dreamthorp is a dreamy village, a place away 
off from the track of traffic, where the contentions and 
disquietude of the world have grown old before the 
sound of the turmoil reaches the retirement of the hill- 
circled hamlet. *' Upon a summer evening, about the 

(199) 



200 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

hour of eight," writes the poet, ''I first beheld Dream- 
thorp, with its westward-looking windows painted by 
sunset, its children playing in the single straggling 
street, the mothers knitting at the open doors, the 
fathers, standing about in long white blouses, chatting 
or smoking ; the great tower of the ruined castle rising 
high into the rosy air, with a whole troop of swallows 
— by distance made as small as gnats — skimming about 
its rents and fissures ; — when I first beheld all this, I 
felt instinctively that my knapsack might be taken off 
my shoulders, that my tired feet might wander no more, 
that at last, on the planet, I had found a home. From 
that evening I have dwelt here, and the only journey I 
am like now to make is the very inconsiderable one, so 
far, at least, as distance is concerned, from the house in 
which I live to the graveyard beside the ruined castle. 
There, with the former inhabitants of the place, I trust 
to sleep quietly enough, and Nature will draw over our 
heads her coverlet of green sod, and tenderly tuck us 
in, as a mother her sleeping ones, so that no sound 
from the world shall ever reach us, and no sorrow 
trouble us any more." 

This is very pretty and very dreamy. Indeed, it 
makes it felt as a matter to be regretted that the name 
of the author interferes with our calling it Smithian, a 
euphonism which should best express it. The facts in 
the case I imagine to be these. Our author, being off 
from Edinburgh on his summer excursion, tired out and 
disgusted with everything and everybody, stumbled upon 
this quiet spot, which, in its contrast to that he had 
just left, entranced and enraptured him. He boarded, 
I am confident ; at any rate, he had no garden tended 



IN THE COUNTRY. 20I 

by his own hands, otherwise he must have discovered 
that weeds and flowers grow together in the same bed, 
and have found the consideration of the weeds forced 
upon him, a matter which he nowhere alludes to in his 
most charming of charming books. 

A doctor may be nothing if he is not practical, — not, 
however, to the exclusion of the poetical, — but the utile 
et dulce are as his gig-horses, and he harnesses them 
always together. I desire to make this essay as one 
would make a prescription, — that is, to a useful end. 
I know the hazy mellowness of midsummer afternoons, 
dreaming dreams in the porch after dinner ; and I know, 
also, the aspect of the matter which grows and gathers 
the dinner. Dreamthorp may tell you about the first. 
My prose will not be found amiss on the other side. 

Imprimis, I do commend you to the country. Green 
fields and trees are not, as pronounced by Socrates, 
'^eternally the same." As God is greater than man, 
so are his works those which must the most continu- 
ously delight and entrance us. A great many matters, 
however, intrude themselves in a consideration of coun- 
try living. To go out of the town with the idea that cares 
and troubles belong alone to the city, and that country 
is all Ambrosia and Arcadia, is simply nonsense. I am 
certainly not far wrong in asserting that country moving 
is effected, as a rule, with less judgment than any other 
important step taken by a man, and hence the frequent 
disappointment. 

" Hackneyed in business, weary at that oar 
Which thousands once fast chained to, quit no more, 
But which, when hfe at ebb runs weak and low, 
All wish, or seem to wish, they could forego ; 



202 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

The statesman, lawyer, ipan of trade, 

Pants for the refuge of some rural shade, 

Where, all his long anxieties forgot, 

Amid the charms of a sequestered spot, 

Or recollected only to gild o'er 

And add a smile to what was sweet before. 

He may possess the joys he thinks he sees, 

Lay his old age upon the lap of ease, 

Improve the remnant of his wasted span, 

And, having hved a trifler, die a man." ^ 

. , . " 'Tis well if looked for at so late a day. 

In the last scene of such a senseless play, 

True wisdom will attend his feeble call. 

And grace his action ere the curtain fall. 

Souls that have long despised their heavenly birth. 

Their wishes all impregnated with earth, 

For threescore years employed with ceaseless care 

In catching smoke and feeding upon air, 

Conversant only with the ways of men, 

Rarely redeem the short remaining ten. 

Inveterate habits choke the unfruitful heart, 

Their fibers penetrate its tenderest part. 

And, draining its nutritious powers to feed 

Their noxious growth, starve every better seed." 

Come now and let us have a formal and reasonable 
talk about a matter which may have so much of com- 
fort or discomfort in it, as you happen to manage 
matters. I take it for granted, you see, that country 
living is in your thoughts. Every man with life and 
freshness in him, and every woman too, for that matter, 
has a country dream. It happened me to be born in 
the country, and to be there reared ; and I have not 
by any means been without the experiences which 
afford one a judgment in comparing country places 
and situations, as well as their advantages and disadvan- 
tages as viewfed in association with the town. So I feel 



IN THE COUNTRY. 



203 



that a consultation together cannot be without its 
benefit. 

Ill the first place, what is the idea? For what do 
you propose going into the country? It is because 
you are tired of the city. Don't go, then. It is be- 
cause you feel restless, and scarcely know what to do 
with yourself. Don't go. Because you have exhausted 
all kinds of things and long for a change. Don't go. 

Two classes of people only, we may commence our 
homily by asserting, find their requirements met in 
the country, — the poor man, who here gets the most 
from his little, and the philosopher, who is brought 
closest in communion with all most worthy his study. 
An assertion that is least without fear of successful con- 
tradiction is, that a man to enjoy country living must 
have developed his religious instincts ; by which, how- 
ever, is not meant Presbyterianism, Romanism, or 
Quakerism, but that he has garnered within him that 
something which allies him with the good, the quiet, 
and the simple. A man with ill instincts, or selfish 
motives, may not but be, on principle, as much out of 
place in the country as is a bad and ill-bred man in 
the company of the virtuous and refined. Not but it is 
recognized that ill-bred and vicious men are found in 
the country, enough of them unfortunately, but the 
viciousness is after the kind of a horse or ox, and the 
people will be found of an order in whom appreciation 
of pleasures above the corporeal has little existence. 
Than these, no class of persons are more to be pitied ; 
they are surrounded with the richest fruits of life with- 
out palate to know or taste them ; they live the span 
of existence with the wine untasted. 



204 ^^^ HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

A parody has been written on ''Five Acres Enough," 
entitled "Five Years Enough," implying that such 
length of time is found quite sufficient for the generality 
of people to get enough of country living. Well, this 
is very true ; it is certainly a very common experience. 
But is the fault with the country or with the residents? 

A man whose habits and long routine of living 
addict him to the theatre and the midnight convivial 
gathering, whose inclinations seldom lead him towards 
books and never to contemplation, this man, ennuye 
and blase, buys for himself a farm, and at a blow sun- 
ders himself from his old associations. A few weeks 
pass, during which he is comfortable and interested 
enough; but how long, in reason and common sense, 
should dissatisfaction stay away? — seldom over a month ; 
it would be even remarkable if, in the course of a year, 
such a man should not be willing to sacrifice anything 
to get away from what he can and may only see as the 
stupidity of his situation ; it is naturally the common 
experience with this class. 

Another man, with greater pretensions perhaps, starts 
by building for himself an extensive establishment, 
surrounds himself with greenhouses, so lays out his 
whole domain that hirelings without number are found 
necessary to that order without which the place is 
nothing. Very soon, from morning until night, this 
man commences to hear complaints, commotion is 
everywhere, — horses go lame, cows dry up, grapes 
mildew, fences are broken down, roofs leak, grass- 
crops are destroyed by the floods, the wheat rusts ; in 
short, so many are the mishaps, the result, all of them, 
of his inexperience, that in despair and disgust he is 



IN THE COUNTRY. 



205 



glad when the whole thing is taken off his hands at half 
the first cost. 

Still another class is like my friend M, who, with a 
family just springing into the requirements 01 society, 
took a place in the country so retired that only once a 
week, as I learned, did any vehicle pass his house, and 
that a neighbor's ox-cart. In winter, it was a long and 
dreary wade or drive through snow and mud, ankle- 
deep, to get to the outlet of communication with the 
world. Now, my friend is a man who, for thirty years, 
had never appeared upon the street with even so much 
as a stain on his immaculate patent-leathers, and his 
professional hands had never, so far as I know, planted 
a single bushel of potatoes. There was an occasion 
on which, as his friends tell, being in rural mood, he 
did dig up his side-yard and bury a peck, but from 
this, evidently, both hands and memory had long re- 
covered. It was certainly not to be wondered at, 
then, that when this gentleman returned at nightfall 
to his lonely domicil, rain- and mud-bedraggled, he 
should have felt a certain degree of disgust, and when 
to such persuasion were added the complaints of his 
family, quite as much shut up and isolated as the 
monks of St. Bernard, one would not incline to blame 
him or to think it unwise that the latter half of the first 
winter sent him back to the town rejoicing. 

Another class still is that one which, knowing no- 
thing about farming, goes out with the expectation of 
a speedy transmutation of every grain of wheat, corn, 
and oats into gold. Between seedtime and harvest one 
is apt to find many moles and weevils ; so these come 
back and spend the rest of their lives in grumbling and 



2o6 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

fault-finding. I knew a capitalist of this class who 
bought a dairy farm of three hundred acres, together 
with its stock of forty cows, but from the day of the 
purchase his carriage was seen almost continually upon 
the road, or else he was to be sought under the big oak 
in front of the village tavern. The man who acted as 
his overseer lost him twenty coavs in a little over that 
number of months ; the gentleman sold the place which 
had cost him forty thousand, for twenty thousand dol- 
lars. His friends say that he has not yet ceased to rail 
at country and country living. 

Going into the country is like going into anything 
else ; there must be a common-sense foundation, and 
the moving is to be duly pondered. 

To consider a country movement, many things are to 
be taken into the reckoning ; if you have had no experi- 
ence you cannot possibly have any judgment about the 
matter. 

First and foremost of all the things you are to con- 
sider, is the healthfulness of a situation. The brightest 
house and cheeriest outlook in nature will be made 
somber by the constant presence of a doctor, and the 
wandering around of an unseen, but ever-felt, specter, 
in the shape of miasm. I have this moment in my 
mind's eye a situation of this kind. I thought, when 
first I saw it, that it was just exactly what I had been 
years in seeking, and without doubt should most 
greedily have possessed myself of it, but that I learned 
the owner had lost three wives on the premises from 
the same endemic influence ; this, while it might be 
an added recommendation to a man cursed with a ter- 
magant, would hardly be such to one who might own 



IN THE COUNTRY. 207 

an angel. Unless, therefore, you have special reason 
for preferring a malarious residence, let not the beauty 
of a place seduce you to its occupancy. 

We want, then, it is seen, to know something about 
malaria and its associations. Malaria — malus, bad ; 
aria, air — means, in its common definition, simply bad 
air. Miasma is its synonym, — infecting effluvia float- 
ing in the air. Because, as everybody knows, certain 
places have always chills and fever associated with 
them, and other places have not, it follows that between 
such places there is some fact of difference ; this fact 
is the presence of miasm, a cause of disease, having a 
signification associative with the locality. 

Miasm is like the fiend which does its black work in 
darkness. No man has as yet seen it closely enough 
to allow him to describe its form, neither has science 
been able to catch its likeness ; like everything else, 
however, by its work is it known, and by its associations 
learned of. 

Without entering on any discussion which shall tend 
towards a definition of miasm scientifically, — this would 
interest a doctor only, — it is enough to say that the 
poison is an emanation which arises from vegetable 
matter subjected to alternations of heat and moisture, 
and thus subjected, with a continuous concentration, 
which decomposes faster than neighboring atmospheric 
or vegetative influences can neutralize or carry off. 

Miasm may be evolved, yet exhibit no ill effects on 
man. If the evolution, as may well be the case, cor- 
responds with antagonizing influences, then man may 
perhaps only be the better, not the worse for it, — as 
thus is made a fertilizer which correlates itself into 



2o8 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

fresh life for his support. Where, on the contrary, 
miasm is in excess of the immediate correlative influ- 
ences, then man and beast both suff"er. 

We have now our logical premises by which to judge 
of the material premises. 

Vegetation, heat, and moisture : these are the three 
active agents in the production of miasma, to which a 
fourth is to be added, in the influence of non-drainage, 
either by the way of the atmosphere or running water. 
The strongest example of a malarious locality one might 
make would be in suggesting a marshy valley in a tropi- 
cal climate, so overrun with fixed water as to destroy a 
prolific vegetation, yet not covering it enough to pro- 
tect the garbage from the putrefying influences of the 
sun ; this valley, in turn, so environed with hills as to 
shut off a circulation of air. Let this be taken as the 
type of a malarial situation. Compare with it the place 
you may be called to look at, and see to what extent 
it shades off from the example. Consider, first, there 
is to be vegetation; second, moisture; third, heat; 
fourth, non-drainage. If a place is without vegetable 
product, you might not refuse it because of a fear of 
intermittent or malarial fever ; that is, so far as the place 
in itself is concerned, although, as in a moment we shall 
see, you might be worse off", as regards the poison, than 
your neighbor occupying the premises that originate 
it. Let us suppose A to live upon the very verge of 
a miasm-producing region. B, his nearest neighbor, 
lives two miles away, in the midst of fields of roses and 
fruit-bearing trees. A is healthy. B is always, in 
season, sick from the malarial poison. What is the 
explanation ? From the side upon which A lives blows 



IN THE COUNTRY. 



209 



a continuous current of air towards the house of B ; the 
poison is blown away from A, it deluges the rooms of 
B. Just as the atmosphere bears the pollen of plants, 
so does it carry the palmellae, or whatever it may be, 
of miasm. Let us make another illustration : B looks 
at and admires property, the background of which is a 
belt of wood. A, the owner, truthfully declares that a 
case of malarial poisoning was never known on the 
premises. B, looking alone at the mediate surround- 
ings, makes the purchase and removes to it his family. 
As winter comes around, B sits at his window and finds 
amusement, not, however, untinctured with regret, in 
looking at C, the owner of the belt of wood, cutting it 
away. As the trees fall, it is seen that beyond is a 
marshy fen. The coming autumn B and all his family 
are driven away from the new home, and now it is seen 
too late that the wood was a wall that kept away the 
poison evolved by the marsh. Cases without number 
of which this is an example might be referred to. 

It may readily be conceived that malarious situations 
exist where the miasm is not sufficient in quantity to 
produce the effects of intermittent or bilious fever, yet 
where there is quite enough of it to keep a man feeling 
good for nothing, — he is not sick, but he is never well. 
I know of one country seat of this kind, where forty 
thousand dollars would not pay for the improvements 
put upon it, and where, I am free to declare, I would 
not think of living, even if, as an inducement, a free 
gift were made to me of the place. 

Ground newly broken is not unapt to generate miasm. 
This results from the sudden exposure of long-buried 
vegetable matter to the influences of moisture and heat. 
14 



2IO ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

It usually, however, quickly wears itself out, and is 
not to be deemed an objection to the health -of a 
place. Pioneers almost universally suffer from endemic 
intermittents. One may generally protect himself, how- 
ever, from the temporary discomfort, by a daily dose 
of the red Peruvian bark, — as much of the powder as 
will lie upon a half-dime silver piece. Living, on one 
occasion, through compulsion, in a neighborhood of 
this kind, where almost everybody was shaking, I pre 
served the most robust and unaffected health by taking 
a wineglassful, twice or thrice daily, of the following 
combination : of the red bark I took one ounce, and 
of Virginia snakeroot half the quantity ; these were 
put together into one and a half pints of water ; the 
infusion was placed upon a stove, and allowed to sim- 
mer down to one pint ; this, when cold, was strained, 
and to it was added one pint of Madeira wine. I may 
say, also, as a sort of addendum, that this combination 
will seldom fail in breaking any ordinary intermittent, 
particularly if, in plethoric subjects, its exhibition is 
preceded by some gentle cathartic medicine. 

Besides miasm, there are other atmospheric associa- 
tions to be considered. I recall this moment a dis- 
tillery, where attempt was made to get clear of the 
mash by throwing it into a running stream, with the 
anticipation of its being carried to the river, but where, 
on the contrary, it became a stagnant putrescent mass, 
impregnating the air for miles with its unendurable 
odor, and inducing such a typhoid tendency that half 
the country-side were down with low forms of fever. 

It is not desirable to have as one's next neighbor a 
careless, slovenly man, whose business is the raising of 



IN THE COUNTRY. 211 

hogs. Few things are more intolerably disgusting than 
the odor from such an establishmeiit, particularly when 
the wind concentrates the fragrance UiDon your parlor, 
dining-room, or chamber. Cologne, patchouly, and 
mignonette only intensify the disgust of the situation ; 
even the latest improved atomizer fails utterly to help 
the matter. 

There are, again, situations where the filth and debris 
of sewage exercise a poisoning influence on the sur- 
rounding atmosphere. This has its principal applica- 
tion to the neighborhood of cities and towns drained 
into adjoining streams. London and the Thames fur- 
nish a notable illustration. A cove, attractive as it is, 
may be of such character as to prove a receptacle for 
the river debris of dead fish and other offal, which shall 
make untenable the charming cottage upon the bank. 
A deep cove has rarely healthy surroundings, the cir- 
culation of its water being too sluggish to insure 
freshness and vitality. Water, like blood, to be healthy, 
must be in a state of continuous movement. 

A non-observant man, purchasing a beautiful stream, 
may be comj^letely disappointed by finding that the 
opacity of its water depends upon a factory, of which 
he had never so much as heard ; he may not let his 
children bathe in it, for he may well fear for them the 
fate of the fish he so plentifully finds lying dead upon 
the shore. A poisoned rural stream is as sad a sight as 
it has grown to be a common one. Always, before buy- 
ing water, know what there is up stream, or what there 
is likely to be. 

A graveyard too near, and on a higher plane than the 
place proposed to be purchased, may not be without 



212 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

the pale of consideration. A spring is simply a surface 
drain, and yours might or might not get its water through 
the cemetery ; not that necessarily such water would have 
any actual impregnation, yet it might. No filter, 
however, equals a rod of earth, and your visitor the 
chemist might be the last to object to drinking from 
your well. The neighborhood of cemeteries has, how- 
ever, been thought to be objectionable, by men of 
judgment, on account of exhalations which they infer 
must necessarily be in a state of constant passage into 
the atmosphere. This would be most apt to apply in 
the case of old yards, where graves are necessarily 
made shallow, and where, from long use, the earth is 
no longer capable of disinfecting the decomposing re- 
mains. An offset, however, would exist in prolific veg- 
etation, this appropriating what the earth might not. 

A greater objection to proximity with a cemetery 
might be thought by many to be the melancholy asso- 
ciations. This would depend very much on circum- 
stances. A graveyard might not be the most cheerful 
outlook for a fashionable, frivolous person, but to one 
of reflective and philosophic habits it might readily 
prove the gateway to his most enrapturing thoughts; 
just as one person is entranced and upraised by the 
grand and solemn strains of an organ, while by the 
same chords another is put into bed with a fit of the 
vapors. Unless the heart is very much out of the way, 
the cemetery is not by any means to be considered as 
without attractions which might render it a desirable 
feature rather than the reverse. If, indeed, there were 
no other reason, and one should come to love the new 
home very much, it would be a kind of sad recommen- 



IN THE COUNTRY. 213 

dation to feel that in death he would not be far separated 
from it, that children and wife would still be near him, 
and that the tear or the flower would each day hallow 
his memory. 

" With fairest flowers, 
While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack 
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
The azured harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
The leaf of eglantine, whom, not to slander, 
Outsweetened not thy breath." 

Only lately it has happened me to be in attendance 
upon a patient whose premises immediately adjoin a 
rural cemetery. I never visit this person but as I pass 
out through the garden I cast a glance to a contiguous 
corner, thinking that if I owned his place I should by 
all means possess myself of the unoccupied spot, that 
thus to my children all of earth I might leave should 
be near them as long as possible. I look upon that 
spare corner near the quiet country house, and over 
my heart there come, with a flood of memory, the 
pathetic lines of Campbell : 

" And say, when, summoned from the world and thee, 
I lay my head beneath the willow-tree, 
Wilt thou, sweet mourner, at my stone appear, 
And soothe my parted spirit lingering near? 
O, wilt thou come, at evening hour, to shed 
The tears of memory o'er my narrow bed. 
With aching temples on thy hand reclined. 
Muse on the last farewell I leave behind. 
Breathe a deep sigh to winds that murmur low, 
And think on all my love and all my woe ?" 

A cemetery, again, may in itself antagonize its sad 
associations. Laurel Hill, for example, or Greenwood, 



2T4 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

with their grand surroundings and artistic adornments, 
looking on a summer day so calm and peaceful, are 
really inviting to a world-weary man, and are not 
gloomy places to any one. My own nature has never 
risen to a higher plane than when wandering through 
Greenwood, and its attractions have for me a fascina- 
tion which carries me each year to its avenues. 

Country churchyards, too, have I seen, where the 
peace of heaven seems lingering over them, — places 
where the birds tarry longest and sunset leaves its last 
ray. Under the trees of such a tarrying-place have I 
sat in the glory of an autumn evening, and felt that 
the notes from the organ-loft were voices from heaven. 

But I am forgetting that I have left the poetry to 
Dream thorp. 

Drainage. — In the town, the corporation sees to it 
that your house and its surroundings are relieved of all 
excess of water ; in the country, every one has to look 
out for himself, and an important matter it is to look 
after, as every country liver finds. Without consider- 
ation of this matter, I once bought a country house 
which literally rotted away from its foundation, and 
there was nothing to be done in the premises but let it 
rot ; drainage, in its particular situation, being en- 
tirely out of question, unless, indeed, one had been of 
a mind to expend more time, trouble, and money than 
the premises were worth. 

Never buy a country house without seeing to it that 
the foundation stands upon a higher level than some 
channel which may drain it, and this, by the way, is not 
to consider alone the dry summer day on which you go 
first to visit the place ; you are to think of the winter 



IN THE COUNTRY. 



215 



and spring. Look to it fully that no excess of water 
shall be able to drown you out ; some places, which in 
dry weather are glorious, are, in winter and spring, 
ankle deep in slush and mire, and everything about 
them is as wet as a soaCked board. Open the front door 
of such a house, and a chill strikes you instantly. A fire 
must be kept the year round, or otherwise you live in the 
moisture of a vault. Places there are of this class where 
the question of the water from the kitchen-pump comes 
to absorb the attention of the whole household. I know 
of such an establishment where a drain, two hundred 
feet in length, was made from the pump to an adjoin- 
ing field, and, this failing to lose the water, a well was 
appended, holding two hundred cart-loads of stone, 
and, after all this trouble and expense, there is almost 
constant worriment; the water will back upon the 
kitchen trough, — sometimes because the drain gets ob- 
structed, sometimes because the well becomes filled 
with the debris that accumulates between the stones. 
For comfort and inexpensiveness, always get a natural 
drain, if possible ; none other, in country living, equals 
it ; not, of course, that this applies to a matter of ten 
feet or so. Such a drain, becoming obstructed, can 
readily be cleared by a pole, but as soon as you get 
out of reaching distance you have for yourself more or 
less trouble. 

Drainage by the roof is another and not less impor- 
tant matter for consideration. Never buy or build a roof 
so flat that it has not in itself the ability to throw off 
all excess of snow. Pitch is to a roof of as much con- 
sequence as it is to a voice. A flat roof, practically 
viewed, is a source of almost as much discomfort as a 



21 6 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

peevish wife. When it snows, you are ever in a worry 
about the excess of weight the rafters are having to 
carry. You cannot help fearing, as you lie snugly in 
bed on a stormy night, that there may be accumulating 
just a little more than the builders allowed for. When 
the snow melts, or the long rains come on, you know 
that shingles are rotting, and that rafters are suffering; 
or, if the roof be of tin, you have to calculate the 
amount of paint each storm costs you. As veranda 
roofs are concerned, flatness is the universal fault; I 
may only judge that no architect ever owned a veranda, 
having to keep it in repair, or otherwise that architects 
and carpenters have some kind of a general copartner- 
ship. Another fault in veranda building, so far as ex- 
pense and unnecessary trouble are concerned, lies in 
that manner of construction which requires plastering. 
Keep the plasterer inside the house ; he has no business 
outside ; if there were no fault to be found with plaster 
itself, the objection would be in its keeping air from 
the rafters, and most particularly does this apply when 
a flat roof is made of anything but tin or slate. 

As to gravel-roofing, I speak from a sufficiently wide 
experience when I say that it is only applicable to very 
temporary buildings, — it is assuredly dearer at six cents 
per square foot than well-painted tin would be at twenty. 
The objection to this material lies not only in its being 
in itself good for nothing, but in its being destructive 
to all that it is intended to protect ; if you want to 
enjoy a big rain-storm, don't have a gravel roof over 
your head. 

A veranda roof should never be without a gutter that 
shall carry the drainage entirely away from its base; 



m THE COUNTRY. 217 

this applies most particularly, as will be seen, to such 
verandas as have the floor-joist resting on the ground- 
level, — a level, by the way, that never is employed by 
the man who designs his second porch. Take it as a 
rule that wood is never to rest directly upon the earth ; 
dampness and stability in timber are incompatibles, and 
the dampness always gets the better of the stability. 

Shade. — No shade is an abomination. A bilious 
fever fattens in the sun as does miasm in a marshy 
valley. Too much shade, on the contrary, and too 
near the house, is equally of ill import ; it keeps 
things damp, and dampness is a breeder of pestilence. 
An atmosphere confined about a house by a too dense 
foliage is, like the air of an unventilated room, not 
fit for practical purposes. The sporadic poisons have 
an intimate relationship with dampness ; miasm lives 
in it as does a snail in his shell. Besides this, it 
rots the wood-work of the building, and even more, 
as the real comfort of living is concerned, it shuts 
out the cool breath of the summer nights, and makes 
restless swelterers where even a blanket might be en- 
joyed. Never have shade so arranged that it interferes 
with circulation, and certainly never buy a country 
house without its shade. Shade-trees are worth more 
than buildings. A man may create out of timber and 
bricks just what he fancies, provided his purse be long 
enough, but no wealth can make an avenue of oaks or 
a clump of elms ; trees grow, and a man may only 
plant for his children. The shady place is the play- 
ground, and the lawn refreshes the visitor. A house 
that stands all outdoors in the country is a hundred 
times more uninviting than the house crowded between 



2i8 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

its fellows on the city avenue. Try boarding in such 
a house a week at least before you buy it. If in such 
premises one's friends visit him twice, let him be sure 
it is himself that is the attraction. 

A Stream of Water. — Water with fish in it, and 
water with depth for the bath and width for the sail, is 
a feature in a country property beyond price. No 
man but he who possesses such a stream can have any 
idea of what the ownership is. Moving water is eternal 
in its newness, and if at some place it happens that it 
plashes and leaps over and among stones and rocks, a 
song is singing day and night. A stream is a pano- 
rama of which one never tires ; it is that thing of beauty 
and freshness which is a joy forever. A stream of water 
crowds upon a man the loves and the philosophy of life 
and living. As one stretches himself upon the cool 
bank and looks out through tree-branches, he luxu- 
riates ; as he fishes, he meditates ; as he sails, he com- 
pares and reflects. Never allow an affordable sum of 
money to separate you from a stream ; it is the very 
last of all the things of earth that shall lose to you 
its attractions, and it is that which, of all your invest- 
ments, shall pay you the largest interest. 

Conveniences. — Men and women are gregarious 
animals, and it will not be found well to get out of the 
way of such gregariousness. A man is not wise in 
buying a lonely place, or a place so difficult of access 
that people stay from him rather than take the trouble 
to get to him. Any house that is beyond a comfortable 
walking distance of the station, or landing, is out of the 
way. It is out of the way, not alone for one's friends, 
but for one's self A man walks to the station a dozen 



IN THE COUNTRY. 



219 



times where he would ride once, particularly if it de- 
pends on himself to gear \x\) ; and a walk to a station 
is a walk into the world. 

It is handy to be so situated that the ladies of one's 
family are independent of John the coachman, or of 
the horses that are always afflicted at inconvenient 
seasons. It is handy to be so in relation with the cars 
that one may remain, after the day's shopping or work, 
to a concert or lecture and run home to bed. Then, 
again, it is handy to feel that friends can come to your 
house independent of the trouble of carriage relations, 
and particularly is this pleasant in winter-time, or in 
rainy weather, or under circumstances where no horses 
may happen to be kept, or when a party of friends 
being at one's house may desire to leave together. But 
of all things is it most convenient in that it keeps a man 
in the world, and chides him if he tends to grow care- 
less or rusty : a man does not care to be seen among 
the well-dressed people at a station looking slovenly 
and untidy. Again, there is a cheerful sound of vitality 
in a car-whistle and in the steamboat-bell. One feels 
that life is at his door if it may please him to step 
into it ; the student, as he hears the sounds, closes his 
book and dreams ; the retired man of business closes 
his eyes and is back in a moment among packages and 
invoices. I often have sat upon my own porch, and, 
as the cars thundered up to the station, felt the wide 
relations with life afforded me by the tireless wheels. 
I may go where I please, I say, and when I please, and 
because I may thus go, and know I may, I care little or 
nothing about the going, so I take it out in thinking 
about those who are traveling, what they may be after, 



2 20 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSIC TAN. 

how life is going with them, and the multitudinous 
things which come of thinking. 

The Farm. — Associated with country living must be 
the things of the farm. I do not mean by this reapers, 
and mowers, and thrashing-machines, for these may or 
may not be necessary to a man as he happens to have 
fixed himself. Let me say, to make an example, that 
you and I are persons of quiet pretensions, having, 
besides the nest-egg that shall buy a place, an income 
say of from one to five thousand a year : we are rich 
enough with either, as we may happen to have educated 
ourselves. What we want is to be comfortable, and to 
get the most out of the calm after the battle. Take my 
word; if you buy a house without garden or land you 
are making a mistake : the country is such a busy 
place that an idler is not in keeping with it ; better a 
hundred times remain in town to find amusement 
and entertainment. If, however, no land is bad, too 
much is not better. A man not strictly dependent on 
his produce, needs that quantity of acres which allows 
him to correlate his force \ that is to say, it is pleasant 
to feel that Patrick's wages pay themselves, that the 
horse raises his own feed, that the hogs give back to the 
land as much as they take from it, that chickens are 
self-supporting, that fruit and flowers and vegetables 
revolve in a circle, of which you, being the center, 
profit, — to express the whole matter in one word, that 
you "make things pay." 

You have commenced by hiring a man whose wages 
are to be, say four hundred a year. You have bought a 
horse of a force commensurate with that of the man. 
You have a plow, harrow, hoes, forks, and the various 



IN THE COUNTRY. 221 

apparatus required for limited planting. Now, what you 
want is to set man, horse, plow, harrow, and hoes to 
work, so that a full circle shall be accomplished. This 
is the problem. The answer to it I am entirely satisfied 
I have worked out. You need fifteen acres of ground : 
ten may be enough, but fifteen is the very fullness of 
the answer. A man who, with horse, plow, harrow, 
and hoe, cannot work with all proper ease and comfort 
this amount of land had better at once be sent adrift, 
or to a hospital for the indolent. With fifteen acres of 
ground, and with a judgment to employ its resources, a 
man can see in its perfection the beauty of a correla- 
tion which employs everything and wastes nothing. 
Five acres, for instance, wastes two-thirds of the time 
of a full hand ; five acres allows the horse to stand idle 
in the stable when he should be harrowing his winter 
corn or gathering into the barn the winter hay ; five 
acres necessitates the keeping up of the chickens to the 
double injury of crops and fowls; the cow, too, is stinted 
in grass, and in return stints in the milk and butter ; 
in short, there is a break in the circle that destroys its 
perfectness. Twenty acres, on the other hand, is equally 
non-correlative. A man cannot get over twenty acres 
to the getting out of all that it has in it; neither can 
a horse. The excess, then, of capital is sunk in the 
extra acres. If it is more than fifteen you want, let it 
be thirty-five, or even forty ; two men and two horses 
should do full justice to forty acres, the work in con- 
cert intensifying the capability. When I say full justice, 
I mean that no hedge-row be unplowed, no headland 
untilled. I have seen two men attempt a hundred acres, 
but the extra sixty seldom means anything more than so 



2 22 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

much capital idle : quite as much could have been 
gotten out of forty as has been brought out of the 
hundred; this is a common experience. 

Growing crops give a pleasure understood alone by 
him who owns them. You do not get it from the crops 
of other people, just as other people's children interest 
not like our own, be they ever so much prettier, 
wiser, or better. A calf born on one's own place is 
marked as no other calf ever was; even a litter of pup- 
pies present points of difference from all other puppies, 
while a brood of ducks or chickens are of unflagging 
interest, from the day the shells are pecked until that on 
which, at table, the guest declares their tenderness and 
succulency. Never is grass so green as one's own ; never 
peach so juicy and rare. If you have not felt this, you 
can judge nothing about the matter, and are to be 
pitied. It is Bayard Taylor, I think, who says, "A man 
has not completed his fullness until he has begotten a 
child, written a book, or planted a tree." He might 
have added that he has not understood his happiness 
until he has plowed land and cultivated stock. Mr. 
Taylor, however, evidently understands this, as he left 
the turmoil of a city life to cultivate in concert his muse 
and acres at Kennet Square; his cabbages equal, no 
doubt, his "Faust," and one might not well accord 
them higher praise. 

Books. — You need not at all mind your neighbor, 
the old farmer, whose place adjoins your own, when he 
tells you that book-farming amounts to nothing. It 
might, perhaps, have been so when he was a boy or 
young man ; but times are changed ; the book-writers 
of to-day are the practical men of the age ; book-farm- 



IN THE COUNTRY. 223 

ing is like book-medicine, or book-law, it is the col- 
lected and collated rules of experience and observation. 
But, then, a man wants to know what to read. There 
is, of farm literature, necessarily a great deal of trash, 
— weeds, it might be more in keeping to say, — ^just as 
every other department of learning is encumbered. A 
solid selection of farm- and garden-books may only be 
made by an experienced man ; but, as one cannot be 
possessed of this lore when he first starts in the country, 
he must have a shorter cut. The first farm-book I ever 
found myself practically interested in was a journal, 
which, up to this day, has preserved a reputation for 
integrity, reliability, and uprightness which makes it no 
compliment from anybody to praise it. I allude to the 
A}7ierican Agi'icuUurist. It was and is my vade-mecum 
in all things that concern country living. This paper 
will tell you in the best and most practical way just what 
to do and just when to do it. If you need information 
on any particular department, it will tell you where and 
what the book is you want. I have never found my- 
self wrong in depending on its judgment. It is a 
pleasure to embrace an opportunity of expressing the 
obligation I feel myself under for the much good the 
Agriculturist has done me, and the pleasure it has given 
me. I proffer it as my own experience that a man can- 
not afford to live in the country without this journal. 

Very well is it to be remembered by the man of the 
present generation when the book-farmer was the target 
for the ridicule of his neighborhood. Nowadays the 
laugh is on the other corner of the mouth, and the old 
man, or the ignorant young one, who eschews journals 
and books, is not only the last in market but the last 



224 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



out of bank. Even aside from this, the practical aspect 
of farming, important as it is, there is one more im- 
portant : I allude to the pleasure which comes of under- 
standing the rationale of things. If, anywhere, there 
is a pursuit which deserves to come under the cognomen 
of a learned profession, it is farming. Chemistry, 
botany, physiology, mineralogy, meteorology, zoology, 
these are certainly as truly the ministers to its apprecia- 
tion and successful practice as they are to the practice 
of medicine; indeed, there is no reason, that I can see, 
why the farm may not direct the man wider than the 
forum. Certain it is, that planting, properly appreciated 
and conducted, is exhaustless in its entertainment ; to 
weary in the laboratory of nature seems impossible, as 
every day has in it something new, and every to-mor- 
row a promise. 

The literature of a profession tells a man what his 
fellows are doing, how they are succeeding, and on 
what the success depends. A magazine is a farmers* 
club, and a text-book is the riddled and sieve-strained 
experience of all who have gone before. How may one, 
then, get along without these? or, if he may, what 
pleasure can he have in a work which he unnecessarily 
and unwisely makes so isolated ? Comparing and meas- 
uring one's successes yield half the pleasure of the suc- 
cess, as certainly having found out some better plan to 
do a thing than is known to your fellows, there is no 
greater happiness than in giving them the good. I re- 
member distinctly the immediate recognition of a good 
received, when, from a journal, I got my first idea of 
soiling stock. It was a something my circumstances 
made me feel the want of, yet unfolded not the indica- 



IN THE COUNTRY. 



225 



tions of the want ; at once I built a pen for my cows, 
and never thereafter had to refill my hay-loft from the 
barns of other people. 

A man who knows nothing of physiology will con- 
sume just one-third more corn in fattening his hog than 
will his neighbor who has learned that the inertia of 
the winter's cold is first to be overcome by the calori- 
facient agency of the grain before it can use its force 
in the evolvement of adipose tissue. A board or so, 
shutting off the north wind, secures the warmth, and 
not a grain of the corn is wasted. So also is it with 
the chickens. A southern window warming up the 
hennery, will correlate heat into fresh eggs for the 
breakfast-table, and add relish to the ham which they 
accompany. Thus looking at the matter, one sees that 
intelligence should circle the whole round ; it is simply 
the repetition of the aphorism, '' Knowledge is power." 
Two hundred pounds of guano to the acre of a lawn 
being overrun with ribbon grass, said a farmer, speak- 
ing to me through a journal, will so bring up the qual- 
ity of the land as to afford that higher nutrition re- 
quired by fine grass, which shall yield it the power to 
root out the meaner organization of the coarser herbage. 
Impressed by the tone of experience marking the article, 
I tried this suggestion, and have now no longer occa- 
sion for my lawn to look as though I pastured pigs 
upon it. 

Outside of what we are disposed to view as the prac- 
tical literature of the farm is another class of works 
which no country house can afford to be without. In 
such class I would put any book which inculcates sim- 
plicity and peaceful pleasure. Isaak Walton, for ex- 
'5 



226 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

ample, will keep the meadow and wood stream so trans- 
parent that the pebble-stones of its bottom shall glisten 
as diamonds. The Country Parson will convert hoeing 
into poetry. Frederick Saunders will tell you all the 
quiet and quaint things of his day, and make you feel 
that it is good to have so learned a friend to talk 
with. Harland Coultas shall make trees converse with 
you, and tell all the secrets of their vegetation and 
growth. Zschokke will invite you to the meditative 
shade which takes his ardent admirer, Victoria, so 
often tq^the peaceful retreat of Balmoral. Thoreau will 
show you how little it takes to make a natural man 
comfortable. Alexander Wilson will invest for you the 
wood tramps with such a glory that never shall you 
weary of the songs of birds, the chatter of squirrels, or 
of the roamings hither and thither. Much, very much, 
is there of this class of literature, and to live among 
it is to breathe the spirit of the Catskill Heights, a some- 
thing, by the way, which can be known only by being 
felt. A man who has gotten into the cloud-regions 
of this great mountain has, by some metamorphosis, 
relieved himself of the littlenesses and meannesses of 
life; so also he who has gotten into the clearer and 
purer atmosphere of simple life comes to see things as 
they are, and throws off the clogging vanities with a 
sense of exhilaration and relief which makes him feel 
that he has only come to the knowledge of the true life. 
Scenery. — Be willing ever to give a price for attractive 
surroundings, and be not too practical in considering 
the relations of a rolling field to the easy running of 
the plow. It may be, however, that you, with whom I 
am just now conversing, are of too practical a nature, 



IN THE COUNTRY. 



227 



as you are pleased to consider yourself, to care any- 
thing about gentle hills and verdure-clad, rolling val- 
leys. Buy you, then, a place on some great stretching 
plain, where vision is bounded alone by the outlooking 
power of the optic nerves. Your plow here will run 
with least directing, and your imagination will never 
be excited to know what a hill-barrier conceals. A 
plain is the best place of residence in the world for a 
man who takes credit to himself in asserting that he has 
none of the poetical nonsense about him. 

Surroundings constitute a place quite as much as the 
land itself. From my own country house I look out on 
the Delaware River fifteen miles. To sit in the fresh 
morning on my porch and watch the vessels comiiig 
and going, is a pleasure of which I have never tired. 
A river is an ever-changing beauty : now the winds 
lash the water into waves, and even steamers struggle 
along with effort; to-morrow, all is placid and calm, 
and one's own cockle-shell of a boat skims like a bird 
over the glassy surface. Adjoining the place of the 
brother who owns the odd shop is a long meadow, 
through which runs a great ditch, or stream, or creek, 
as it is indifferently called; here we may catch a corn- 
basket of perch in a morning, or find a snapper for a 
soup any day in season. This stream runs directly into 
the river, and it is but the pull of a five minutes' row to 
convert a tired fisherman into an enthusiastic yachter. 

Sunny Slope is the residence of another brother of 
the writer's family; it is a charming villa, perched on 
the top of a gentle hill, completely hemmed in and 
guarded by a thousand sentinels of firs, pines, and 
larches. Back of it runs a placid stream, such as would 



2 28 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

have entranced the gentle Isaak on a midsummer's 
morning; great trees of half a century's growth over- 
hang the water, and look as if longing to dip their 
green fingers into its pellucid freshness. I have thought, 
as in meditative mood I have stretched myself full 
length under these old trees, listening to the drowsy 
hum of the insect world in the neighboring field, that 
in this belt of wood, and in this quiet stream, much, 
very much, of the value of the place consisted. Cer- 
tain I am that, for my own part, I would not be tempted 
to give half as much for it without as with them, although 
they are only surroundings and not bona fide of the 
place. Another association is a whitewashed railroad 
bridge in full view as one sits upon the veranda of the 
house ; across this, day and night, at intervals of a few 
hours, roll the heavy trains, giving vitality to even the 
sleepiest afternoon. A busy village, too, is in the fore- 
ground, and one, as he listens to the clatter of toil in 
car-house and shop, may rejoice in the inclination 
which has led him to seek his place in the bright, free 
outdoors. 

A water view or relation of some kind, as implied a 
page back, I would consider an absolute essential to a 
country place. It need not be an ocean, or bay, or even 
river ; it may be only a stream winding through a wood, 
or a rivulet running down a hillside: be it little or 
great, however, you will learn its value only when you 
come to it. That objections not unfrequently lie 
against water is, it must be admitted, too true : thus, 
residents along river-banks are exposed to the maraud- 
ing propensities and habits of a certain class of sailors, 
who make forays on the hen-roosts and fruit gardens. 



IN THE COUNTRY. 229 

Epidemic diseases have an affinity for water which leads 
them to follow streams, while endemic sources of offense 
against mortals are more commonly found associated 
with the riverside than the back lands. The salt- 
laden air from a grand sea-view may hurry the invalid 
from the beautiful thing forever, while a wood stream 
may readily prove the instrument of an intermittent 
fever. One has always to consider the mien of a good. 

Railways, convenient as they are, compel a compen- 
sation aside from the fares paid as one travels over them. 
Tramps universally select railroads for their wanderings, 
and a wretched, worthless, worrying set they are. I 
have come to doubt, after considerable experience, if 
any good ever came from helping them. I would not, 
however, like to be an instrument of discomfort to the 
single wretched deserving one among the host of 
wretched undeserving ones, so I only suggest that all 
are not quite so good as they profess to be, and one, 
until he gets a little experience, will do best by not 
passing out money too freely. So far as food is con- 
cerned, give of this all you please ; it will generally be 
left somewhere about the exit gate, and serves as well as 
ever for the chickens, who soon learn where a meal is 
always to be found. Give money, however, and the 
beggars grow in number like the locusts of an August 
morning ; where they all come from, or how all have 
learned you are a giver, may only be surmised, — they 
come, however, and they know you. 

The neighborhood of a factory has not been thought 
the most desirable that a horticultor might select. 
Factory-boys love fruit ; it is quite natural they should. 
The misfortune is, they have none of their own, and the 



230 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

difference between meum and tuiim is not always appre- 
ciated by them with a desirable nicety of distinction. 
But factories themselves, when very near, are worse 
than the boys who work in them ; this is my own in- 
dividual opinion. Factories have a way of frequently 
taking fire, and if the wind happen to be toward your 
place at the time of the conflagration, it is not at all 
agreeable to look upon the fiery flying debris; it is 
yery pretty, pyrotechnically speaking, but it is associ- 
ated with just that trifle of anxiety which makes one 
feel easier when the exhibition is over. 

But, with all, if factory-boys and factory-fires are 
nuisances, the hum of the spindles is not ; there are few 
sounds more soothing than the whir of factory-machines ; 
it is the modified roar of the great Babel, — a something 
that makes ease more easy, in fact, a very soporific to 
a lazy man. Then, again, barring always the fires and 
the boys, it is a feature to have a factory or a great mill 
not too far off; it is an interesting place to visit, and 
one is, besides, sure of an intelligent and energetic 
neighbor in the owner. It has never happened me to 
meet a mill-operator who was not an interesting man 
in the way of practicality, reading, and culture. 

The drinking-water of a neighborhood, or place, is 
not undeserving attentive consideration. A man is, 
in himself, nearly all made up of water, and if he is to 
thrive and keep substantial on such aqueous aliment, 
he needs, certainly, that quality in which he finds his 
nutrition. Few things differ more than water. Pure 
water is a colorless fluid, having neither taste nor smell ; 
it is a compound made up of the two gases oxygen 



IN THE COUNTRY. 231 

and hydrogen, — one volume, by measure, of the first 
to two of the latter. Water in which exist other in- 
gredients is impure, and may be termed mineralized ; 
as analysis shall exhibit foreign admixture, so it is a 
necessity to know whether the water may, or may not, 
be drinkable. Water, for example, impregnated too 
freely with lime is not unapt to induce one of the most 
undesirable complaints that can afflict the human body, 
finding, indeed, its relief only in a surgical operation 
which is associated with the greatest risk. An iron 
impregnation, on the contrary, might very well prove 
the salvation of a whole family predisposed to anaemic 
diseases. Sulphurous admixtures, or arsenical, or saline, 
would prove of benefit, or the reverse, as these might 
happen to agree, or disagree, with special requirements. 
The analysis of any water is easily made, however, by 
a chemist, and a consultation with the family doctor 
will soon settle, in any case, the question of fitness or 
non-fitness. Everything outside of oxygen and hydro- 
gen, it is to be remembered, is foreign to pure water, 
and, unscientifically considered, would be apt to prove 
an instrument of evil, or, it might be, good, as accident 
should determine. Where a matter is so easy to decide, 
it is certainly not prudence to trust chance. 

Rain-water, of which, in our latitude, we have such 
plenty, is always easily secured in abundance by simply 
saving that which falls upon the roof of the dwelling or 
barn, and if one chooses to incur the expense of a cistern, 
he has a water with which the chemist will not be apt 
to find fault. A cistern which has answered an admir- 
able purpose at my own barn was improvised by burying 
a hogshead four feet beneath the surface of the ground ; 



232 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

in the upper head were fitted the pipes of conduction, 
— one of them carrying the water from the gutter of the 
eaves, the other being attached to a pump ; by this 
simple arrangement we have mostly had water enough 
for the barn requirements. 

'* Never," says Dreamthorp, '^ was velvet on a mon- 
arch's robe so gorgeous as the green mosses that beruff 
the roofs of farm and cottage, when the sunbeam slants 
on them and goes." Green moss has its poetical aspect, 
but it is when seen on the farm- and cottage-houses of 
somebody else. I am sorry to express this ; it has a 
kind of selfishness about it ; but it is true, nevertheless. 
No man can afford the indulgence of the poetic instinct 
to an extent which allows of the cultivation of mosses 
upon his own roofs; a roof with moss upon it means 
rottenness, and the rottenness means the inside of a 
house set outside ; and it is not at all difficult to see 
that this is a kind of poetry that contains within itself 
the elements of its own destruction. One cannot afford 
to pay for a moss-grown roof simply that it is gorgeous. 
In a dreamy mood I was tempted once myself to buy 
a moss-grown roof. You will find it well, if satisfied, 
to let the cost of the experience be mine. I was so 
mulcted that whenever, nowadays, a friend consults 
me about the "cot in the valley," — and the valley is 
the place for mossy roofs, — I ask him if he has looked 
at the Roof. Yes, I have paid for an experience in 
Roofs: — shingle roofs, double where they should have 
been treble ; tin roofs, riddled with microscopic holes, 
yet not too small to save the pretty paper newly put 
over the chamber walls; slate roofs, under which 



IN THE COUNTRY. 



233 



winter frost finds its way, seeming to laugh at yon, 
as slate after slate cracks and whirls on the mocking 
wind. Gravel roofs, too. In economical mood I have 
experimented in tar and gravel. My tar I now keep 
for my patients with phthisis, and the gravel I am 
satisfied to consume upon my carriage-drive. Fancy 
Mansard roofs, also, have come under my notice. We 
have one in the family ; the first cost, I am led to 
believe, was not by any means the greatest in its con- 
struction ; it seems, or did seem, as subject to fits of 
leaking as is a certain nervous patient I have, to fits of 
hysteria; it is all right, cured now, I believe, or so 
pronounced by the builder, but certainly I have not 
paid my hysterical patient more visits than did the 
roof-doctor his roof. I only did not sympathize in 
the matter of the multitudinous bills, because, in this 
direction, generous ebullitions had long been exhausted 
on my own pocket. Let not a man be deceived in 
•accepting Webster "that a roof is a cover to a house." 
Answer well as this may in a dictionary, and apply as 
the definition of a class or genus, yet one will do best 
by acting on the premises that a class is a thing made 
up of species. 

Proof-readers, as every one knows who has ever pub- 
lished a book, are very practical individuals ; it is not 
at all unfrequently the case that they give an author 
more trouble with their incessant queryings than the 
author gives the printer with his careless manuscript ; 
and this is saying a good deal. I am interrupted just 
at this point by the gentleman accoucheur to this volume, 
who seems very desirous that I shall tell him, out of 



234 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

the fullness of my knowledge of country things^ how a 
man without a bank account shall find himself at the 
station which precedes the consideration of situations, 
outlooks, malaria, and graveyards. In other words, 
this suggestive individual asks me how a man, however 
much fitted by education, habits, and inclinations, may 
come to the enjoyment of country living if he has no 
money. 

Now, since such a query has been suggested, I do 
not at all doubt me that there are others interested 
alike in such a question, and, as I see no difficulty at 
all in the answer, I will have a double pleasure in talk- 
ing about the matter: first, because if I can show my 
friend a road away from the dark desk at which all 
day he tries his eyes over pages which must long since 
have grown out of interest to him, I shall feel that I 
have somewhat repaid the trouble which I am sure my 
ill-punctuated scribbling gives him. While, secondly, 
to point the way to the ownership of a country-placej 
or, indeed, to several, I have only to modify a very 
little my own experiences. To show him how to own 
a farm will, indeed, cost me infinitely less trouble than 
did the answering for him this very morning of a single 
query. He will then heed, in more than his usual 
professional way, what I now write for his benefit. 

" Where there is a will there is a way." This is the 
expression of the common experience, and this expe- 
rience, I assume, is always truthful and reliable. A few 
days back, conversing with a friend just returned from 
a tour in Europe, he informed me that his expenses 
amounted to just twelve dollars a day. Bayard Taylor, 
in his "Views Afoot," went over the same ground 



IN THE COUNTRY. 235 

traveled by my friend, at a cost at which the latter 
started, and without the slightest doubt, as I am well 
convinced, had much the better time. The one car- 
ried luggage enough to swamp him, the other had a 
knapsack. One has only to read Mr. Taylor's books to 
see what a glorious trip, in contrast, was that first one. 
When myself a boy, with more desire than means, I 
traveled a hundred and fifty miles to New York, 
spent a week in that city, excursionized on the Hud- 
son and East Rivers, returning home with thirty cents 
out of the fifteen dollars with which I started, and 
which fifteen dollars had cost, as I must admit, con- 
siderable deprivation and trouble to get together. I 
have often since been to that city, lived in its most 
luxurious hotels, and not denied myself entirely its 
expensive enjoyments, but I have never lived over the 
pleasures of that first visit. 

Success in any undertaking depends so much on a 
man himself that it is always hard to mark out a path 
for one not perfectly and fully known. But I will make 
an illustration, and I will do it by metamorphizing 
myself temporarily into my friend the proof-reader. 

I start with the assumption that I prefer country to 
town, that my ideal is to get into the country, and, 
being determined to make there a home for myself, I 
set about it at once. First, one cannot move without 
money; and second, one cannot buy a place without 
money. Money, then, is the first matter. Now, let 
me look about at my town relations. The house I live 
in costs me for rental say two hundred dollars a year; 
for this I have a shelter, nothing else; no eggs, no 
chickens, no vegetables, no anything which serves as an 



236 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



offset against the rental ; the necessities mentioned, 
together with meat, milk, and the etceteras of house- 
keeping, must be paid for, all of them, additional. 
The income out of which I pay for these things is one 
thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a year, as it may 
be, and it takes the whole of it to meet expenses. I 
then would seem to be in a cul-de-sac, but I am deter- 
mined in my endeavor to get out of it. Such determi- 
nation must be the motive force. 

First, I consider the direction countryward in which 
I would like to live, and next — a most important con 
sideration, fixed as I am — the matter of communication 
with town. I shall have, of course, to continue, years 
likely, my city occupation, for on this, until I see my 
way to a better, am I to depend for my support. I should 
be suited in this respect in a distance of half an hour, or 
even three-quarters, by rail ; this settled, the fare then 
becomes the next question. What will it cost for the 
double trip daily the year round ? this I am to consider 
as a dead outlay ; the pleasure of the ride, and the 
good which comes to one's health, I may not take into 
the account. Pleasure I cannot afford particularly to 
consider, and as for the exercise, that I must esteem a 
secondary matter. The gist of the thing is money, 
money, ^' only this and nothing more." Thirty-five 
dollars a year is the ordinary commutation price on 
most of the roads for this distance. This, then, is 
understood. 

Now first commences my outlay in the premises. I 
must get an idea of properties. So, scanning the 
newspaper daily, I at length see something that looks 
according to my need. Here is a place advertised of 



IN THE COUNTRY. 237 

four acres, with a plain comfortable dwelling, ten miles 
out, and the price fifteen hundred dollars, terms easy. 
Saturday, or, if I cannot possibly get this time, I take 
Sunday, and walk or ride to see the place. I do not, 
however, find it what I want; it is too lonely, or it has 
an unpromising soil, or it involves a walk too long to 
be convenient to the station, or there is no school near 
for the children, or the house is out of repair to an 
extent which shows a second cost to be immediately 
added to the first, or the fault is in the ill condition of 
the fences, or absence of a necessary barn, or there is a 
neighboring marsh which threatens miasm. Whichever 
or whatever it is, the place fails to suit ; but I am not 
to have an entirely bootless errand. I proceed to learn 
something of what is considered easy terms in the sell- 
ing of country-places, and here, to my gratification and 
surprise, I find out that a very trifle of money down, 
only, indeed, enough to fix and secure the matter, is 
all that is necessary, — three hundred dollars is enough. 

I may stop now, except that it please me each holi- 
day to walk and look at advertised properties. Now 
it is that I bend all my forces to the getting of three 
hundred dollars. I move into a house at fifty dollars 
less rent ; this is fifty dollars a year saved. I deny 
myself the fall coat, and suggest to my wife that the old 
dress will look handsome to me until the place is bought. 

In short, I do not hesitate to pinch the present for 
the future, and take my compensation in talking and 
thinking about what is to be. In two years, if not in a 
year, the three hundred dollars are in bank. 

Again now, and in earnest, the search for the place 
recommences, and still also the saving goes on. Finally 



238 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

a little farm is foand, just like one, if you please, I 
happen to know on sale at this moment of writing. It 
is a two-story, red-painted house, not particularly beau- 
tiful in itself, but capable of being made so when a 
tasty hand shall alter the color, and in the future put a 
nice little porch around it. There is a good barn, 
a well of fine water, a beautiful wood on the opposite 
side of the road, and four acres of well-fenced land now 
half covered by cultivated blackberries and strawber- 
ries. The soil is very fair truck, and sufficiently light 
to be plowed, if necessary, by an overdriven, twenty- 
dollar hack horse, and then kept in order all the rest 
of the season with the hoe. A railway is within fifty 
feet of the front door, and over this road hundreds 
of business-men travel daily to and from their business 
in town ; a station being within a hundred yards. A 
beautiful village, with its single maple arbored street, 
extends itself out to the property, it making, indeed, 
the last house of the town as it looks westward. This 
is the place ; it is fifteen hundred dollars, and can be 
bought with the three hundred dollars, — the remainder 
lying on mortgage. 

We are prepared now for the purchase, and at once 
make it. We move, and the day the town house is 
vacated fifty dollars more is saved on the rent, seventy- 
two we pay as interest money on the mortgage, and 
thirty-five for our yearly ticket ; this is one hundred 
and seven against one hundred and fifty, or against 
two hundred, as formerly paid. We see now, at 
once, that we have in this single item a sinking fund, 
which, let alone, will take care of the mortgage in a 
very reasonable time. But the mortgage is now seen 



IiY THE COUNTRY. 239 

not to be a matter requiring immediate attention ; we 
pay but six per cent, for this money, we should like 
to get fifty for our own, and this we can do. We 
make now an investment to this effect by buying a 
cow, perhaps as well a dozen or two chickens, and, if 
not conscientious about intruding on the property of 
our neighbors, we start two or three pairs of pigeons, 
which latter, in a year, will give more pigeon-pies and 
broiled squabs than a family may care to eat. 

Now our place is going. Milk, cream, and butter 
for everything, eggs for breakfast, and, after a fair start, 
vegetables, fruits, and berries, which give us all we 
possibly can consume, together with a good surplusage 
for the market, beside a pig or two developing from 
the consumption of the garbage. 

But what about the work required for all this ? queries 
again our proof-reader. I answer him, one is to do all 
he can himself in the early morning and evening hours; 
it is, to a lover of nature, play, not work, to cultivate 
a garden ; but if the weeds accumulate, and the work 
at any time pushes, then there is a man to be hired 
occasionally for a day or so ; he will pay his way, 
never doubt that, and to prove it you will find him 
willing to take the whole labor off your hands and 
cultivate the place on shares ; that is, you do nothing 
and get half the produce. You recognize that now 
you have become a property-owner, and your estate 
will work for you. 

Another way, however, is to take now yourself an 
occasional day from town and give it to the country- 
place ; this will keep up the work, while, at the same 
time, it pays with a large overinterest the money you 



240 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



seem to have sacrificed at the office. At any rate, as it 
will now cost you not so much by one-half to live as 
when in the city, you may work only half your time 
in town and be just as well off at the end of the year. 

We will take now another illustration : fifteen years 
back a common farm-hand, whose prudence and 
economy had saved to him a few hundred dollars, and 
whose inclinations had conferred on him habits of in- 
dustry, economy, and prudence, was enabled, through 
the substantiality of his character, to secure on shares 
a fine farm belonging to one of my own personal friends. 
At the end of some eight years he was able to buy a farm 
for himself, and which his labor and judgment have now 
converted into one of the most valuable in his county. 
From a farm-hand, the servant of others, he is now be- 
come a farm-owner and the master of servants, and so 
much is it to his credit that his neighbors delight to 
point to him as an example of what frugality and fixed- 
ness of purpose may accomplish without the start which 
so many people like to talk about : he started without 
a penny ; he is to-day, for his situation, rich. 

This, then, is tlie answer to my friend the proof- 
reader ; and if he finds himself as able to act upon the 
suggestions presented as he proves himself competent 
in matters of syntax and prosody, he may, in a single 
year, be hoeing weeds from his own acres instead of 
pulling them from the manuscripts of authors. Indeed, 
more than this, he may, sooner or later, come to give 
us a book "On the Advantages of a Four- Acre Sun- 
shiny Lot over a Gloomy Printing-Office Desk;" and, 
as I am sure any work which he might write would be 
reliable, I will here leave the matter with him. 



ADDENDUM. 

LOOKING over what has been written, I am led 
seriously to doubt whether any but the most in- 
dulgent of readers can have reason to be satisfied in 
the investment of time and money which has been 
given the author in the volume now about ended. I 
propose, therefore, in satisfaction to my own conscience, 
to doff here the Bohemian, as I see in his bulletin the 
publisher has been pleased to term the writer, and in 
the last dozen pages find my way back to the point of 
departure. 

I am now again — and you will please thus to see me 
— a plodding doctor, you a patient. I will offer a les- 
son in medicine, a little office advice, let us call it. If 
you take the trouble to understand, as I shall take care 
to make plain the matter upon which I discourse, I 
doubt me not that from my shoulders I shall be able 
to cast any and all sense of obligation. 

*'A sound mind in a sound body." This is the 
translation of a Latin phrase of wide meaning and cir- 
culation. It has been asked, with much pertinency, 
"If there ever was a philosopher who could endure 
patiently the toothache." A proper answer to the 
question is, that the philosopher avoids toothache ; just, 
indeed, as with Epicurus he avoids all ill by acting on 
the Socratic idea of bringing down from the skies his 
philosophy, and applying it to every-day affairs. 

i6 (241) 



242 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN, 



The edge of a wedge is knifelike, but the haft which 
follows tears asunder the log of a century's growth. 
Philosophy includes physianthropy, and this, for the 
mass of us, is that in which our concern seems the most 
particularly to lie. Physianthropy considers medicine, 
and in such a sense the physician is a physianthropist. 
We will consult, then, together in our final hour of 
intercourse of that part of philosophy which by com- 
pulsion claims the attention of every man. We shall 
be sure to find in it, as in everything else philosophical, 
— a good. 

Disease, to one who has not pondered the matter, 
must seem to be a series of complicated and associated 
phenomena; to the physician it is seen in all its protean 
forms to have a '* principle," so simple in its abstract 
that it would appear the dullest man should be as able 
to comprehend the central or axial truth as the erudite. 
An ordinary '' text-book," as it is called, in medicine, 
will number not less perhaps than three thousand pages, 
each and every one of which is occupied by closely- 
printed words describing disease ; the ordinary reader, 
turning over these pages, observing the recondite para- 
graphs and the apparently complex aphorisms, would 
have nothing to do but to close it in sheer despair of 
making head or tail of the matter. The physician, 
however, finds no single line or induction complicated 
or confused ; for the appreciation, he has fitted him- 
self by the study of as many thousand pages of physi- 
ology, this, in its turn, having been preceded by a tome 
of lessons dissected out from the cadaver. 

Several times in the course of these essays use lias 
been made of the idea of a lever. A man knowing no- 



ADDENDUM. 



243 



thing of the complex associations of such an instru- 
ment, if shown that moved to or fro it controls the 
force of the locomotive, would thus be seen to possess 
in his own hand a power which readily enables him to 
move or stop a train, using precisely the same principle 
which would be employed by the engineer. Between 
the two, however, resides this great difference : the one 
stops or starts the train, understanding not how or 
through what association he accomplishes the object ; 
the other knows all about the matter : the first is not 
at all able to reason upon the phenomena he himself 
produces ; the second may ascend from the coal which 
evolves the steam, to the wheels and cranks manipu- 
lated through the influence of the steam. 

Wonderful as it may seem, indeed, incomprehensi- 
ble, to him who has just turned the thousand pages, 
one word, one single word, is the lever of all the tomes 
which treat of the science of dis-ease. One word de- 
scribes that upon which the whole great superstructure 
is reared. The meaning of one word comprehended, 
man finds himself in the center of the circle, and to 
him the mysteries of the circlets have ceased to be 
mysteries. But to learn this word in its fullness, man 
has, as yet, found no short cut. 

*' Irritation." — This is the word of such pregnant 
meaning. Now follow me closely, and heed, for good, 
a doctor's prescription. 

Whenever a man has anything the matter with him, 
no difference what, where, or how situated, the trouble 
arises from the presence, directly or indirectly, of 
some agent of irritation. This appreciated, the infer- 
ence at once follows that the relief and cure of the 



244 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



dis-ease lie in the discovery and removal of the cause 
inducing it. 

Now, we stop for a moment to consider the meaning 
of the term irritation. It is, as you find it in any dic- 
tionary, '' that Effect, which arises from the presence of 
an irritant." An irritant, then, is that which irritates, 
or which produces irritation. We may make, now, an 
example. Two men, both in dis-ease, enter a doctor's 
office ; the one complains of pain in his eye, the other 
of pain in his abdomen. The doctor, appreciating, as 
his cardinal principle, that both are suffering from the 
presence of an irritant, proceeds at once to his inquiries. 
In the painful eye he discovers, very quickly, a particle 
of sand; this is removed, and the relieved organ returns 
at once to its normal condition. Passing, now, to his 
second patient, he finds the matter of recognition not so 
easy; the presence of the irritant is not to be doubted, 
but just where it is, and what it is, is a question. As, 
after the ordinary superficial observation, he fails en- 
tirely to get sight of it, he must judge of its presence, 
position, and character differentially. Here it is seen 
he differs from the unread man as does the engineer 
from the lever-mover ; he cannot see the thing with his 
eyes, he cannot learn of it through his judgment, he 
may not push or pull it away with his fingers; he will 
only discover and unearth it through his knowledge. 
It is not a digression, if the doctor just here suggests 
to the reader that his (the reader's) judgment should 
perceive that patent nostrums, or any unprescribed 
medicine, may only do good by the merest chance, 
by accidentally proving the antagonist of an irritant, 
a thing which any experience will exhibit to be of 



ADDENDUM, 245 

such rare occurrence that it is never sensible or pru- 
dent to take the hundred risks against, to the one on 
the other side. Is there any difference, as the exhibi- 
tion of common sense is concerned, between the man 
who takes an unprescribed medicine for an obscure 
complaint, not at all understood by the prescriber, 
and the man who starts out on a most important jour- 
ney, blindly taking a road suggested by one who has 
not learned even whither he would travel ? Perhaps he 
would get where he wanted to go, — he might get there. 

A first prescription, then, will be, and it certainly 
must prove worth at least half what has been paid for 
the book: B. — When you cannot very plainly see what 
is the matter with an injured watch, or straighten the 
bent hand, call in the watchmaker, not the tailor. 

Irritation, however, involves as its sequences a cer- 
tain series of phenomena which anybody may under- 
stand, and the understanding will show him what should 
be done, if it does not show him always just how best 
to do it. 

First, we are to understand that dis-ease is irritation ; 
that irritation is the presence of an irritant. An irri- 
tant may be, and indeed is, anything that interferes 
with the natural functions of a part or parts. A par- 
ticle of crust in the carious cavity of a tooth is an irri- 
tant which worries the nerve. A rheumatic effusion 
into a joint is an irritant which impedes the free mo- 
tion of the articulation. Miasm passing from the marsh 
into the blood is the irritant which in itself is intermit- 
tent fever. Super-alkalinity of the blood is the irri- 
tant we call the poison of typhoid fever. 

An irritant of any kind entering the system, antag- 



246 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

onism is the immediate result. This is what we call 
sickness. Nature at once rebels, and arouses herself to 
cast out the incubus, thus giving us dis-ease. What is 
now to be done is to help nature, assist our own side. 
If the crust is in the tooth, we will rinse it out or pick 
it away. If the rheumatic poison or the miasm has 
stolen unaware into the blood, we are at once to get 
from the physician, if we have it not in ourselves, the 
knowledge required for the antagonism. Whatever 
will neutralize the irritant will be the cure of our dis- 
ease, for the discomfort, we recognise, is simply the 
result of the battle commotion going on between na- 
ture and the irritant. Which may conquer lies in the 
simple matter of which is the stronger. 

Nature, for the removal of an irritant, draws up her 
forces always in a certain order of battle. First the 
call is sounded far and wide over the system at large ; 
then general commotion is observed ; hurrying to the 
attack from every part is the reserve force. We put our 
finger upon the pulse, and find it excited. We express 
this by saying that inflammation is supervening, and 
this does fully express it, for inflammation is simply a 
perverted condition of the circulation. But how does 
inflammation antagonize an irritant? We will see this 
in instancing an example. 

Here is a man who has run a splinter into his flesh, 
and it has gone so deep we may not get at it to pull it 
away. In the immediate proximity of this foreign body 
is a nerve called sentient or sentinel ; its office is to 
keep the nerve-centers informed, telegraph-like, of all 
that is taking place in its neighborhood. No sooner is 
its information received than is issued the order which 



ADDENDUM. 247 

provokes the disturbance we have witnessed; it is a 
simple throwing forward of battalion after battalion, 
enough, if they can be produced, to cast out the enemy. 
First come the skirmishers, not many in number ; tech- 
nically expressed, it is simple vascular excitement, — it is 
the militia of the immediate neighborhood. These are 
not likely to effect much good ; they are the seventy-five 
thousand of our lamented Lincoln ; but soon come the 
three hundred thousand, — tramping they come from 
every village and hamlet of the system; technically, 
we call this active congestion. Now is inaugurated the 
order of battle ; the invader is surrounded ; tier after 
tier the troops intrench themselves between him and 
supply ; they starve him out by starving the country in 
which he has settled ; the country starves and dies, but 
the invader dies with it. Let me make another expres- 
sion of this. An irritant, we need not consider what 
it may be, settles at a certain point, producing what we 
call a boil. The blood stagnates, and nature soon per- 
ceives her inability, unassisted, to overcome the stasis. 
She has, then, only to kill and get clear of the part in 
bulk. Now the observer perceives a growing indura- 
tion completely circumscribing the affected part ; this 
is the earthwork of the battalion,—/.^, the lymph thrown 
out by the blood. Soon the circumvallation is com- 
plete, — all circulation is cut off; the boil, we say, sup- 
purates, that is, it is starved out ; and flesh and irritant 
are thrown off together. The enemy destroyed, the 
battalions are called off; i.e. the lymph is absorbed, 
and, in a short time, equilibrium and quiet are restored. 
If the rebellion could have been antagonized at Sumter, 
the seventy-five thousand would have been enough. 



248 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

The sooner a cause is killed, the less the commotion 
and danger. Now we pass to the wider aspect of the 
principle. 

An irritant entering the blood, unlike a localized 
irritant, is comparable to a general rebellion. The 
commotion is everywhere over the system at large, the 
danger is general, and the weakest, as in the body 
politic, — however innocent of the disturbance, — is most 
likely to fare the worst. What is the character of the 
danger ? It may be as an avalanche, which at once 
overwhelms and buries a man ; but it is much more apt 
to be like the cave from a bank-side which crushes in 
the ribs or breaks the limbs. A poison entering the 
system, and not combated, bears harder and harder, like 
a continuous strain, until the weakest part gives way, and 
the rest follows. We see then very plainly here, that the 
common-sense aspect of the treatment is to find and 
administer at once the antidote to the poison, or, if 
this may not be, we must bring all collateral aids to the 
assistance of nature in fighting the battle. A poison 
wears itself out, just as a warrior spends his force, — the 
power that can stand it longest comes out conqueror. 
But what is meant by such assistance ? Better here 
call at once the physician to advise in the particular 
case ; but if no doctor be by, then is meant b) such 
assistance ammonia water, brandy, beef-tea, cod-liver 
oil, rich roast beef, sea-bathing, horseback exercise, 
any and every thing which stimulates and supports a 
man. The brandy or the whisky for the rattlesnake- 
bite; the rare beef, the sea-bathing, the horseback 
exercise, for the poison of scrofulosis. 

But there is a much more e very-day aspect of this 



\ A DDEND UM. 249 

matter, and if the reader will heed fully and understand 
just what I shall most plainly tell him, it may very well 
be that his outlay for our book shall some time or other 
prove the purchase-money of his life. 

One of the most common expressions heard, and 
heard everywhere, is, "I have taken a cold." Where 
one man has died in battle, a thousand have died from 
taking cold ; and of every thousand dying, five hundred 
have come to their fate from not knowing what a cold 
is. As a physician, I am satisfied I do not overstate 
this. 

Now, what I propose here is to tell the reader just 
exactly what a cold is, and the principle on which the 
doctor treats it. The whole gist of the matter is very 
simple, so much so, indeed, that you will likely be 
prompted to ask ''if that is all;" and yet all it will be. 

A Cold means a disturbance, from exposure, of the 
circulation ; such exposure may have been either to 
cold, to heat, or to draughts. Flowing through the 
circulatory system of a man is that material which we 
call the blood. In a state of equipoise, or non-derange- 
ment, every part has alike of this fluid its proper pro- 
portion ; there is just so much circulating through his 
lungs, just so much in his liver, so much in his spleen, 
so much in his feet ; every part has enough, but not 
overmuch ; he is comfortable, in health, in ease. 

Now we will make a cold. 

Four friends go out for a walk on a sloppy winter's 
day, and all come back with wet feet. Or the four, on 
a summer's afternoon, go out for a row on the lake or 
river ; becoming overheated from exertion, each throws 
off his vest or neckcloth, luxuriating in the breeze which 



250 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



SO rapidly and delightfully refreshes. Next day the four 
are sick; all have taken a cold. One, however, has 
Pneumonia, a second Pleurisy, a third Inflammation of 
the bowels, and the fourth Lumbago. In other words, 
all have the same thing, yet all have different diseases. 
This is their condition. The cold, impinging on the 
surface of their wet feet, or over their exposed chests 
and necks, so contracted the small vessels of those parts 
that all the blood was driven out of them ; this fluid 
had, of course, to go somewhere, so it intruded on the 
circulation of other parts; it became, in reality, through 
its excess, an irritant ; it overstimulated, it overcon- 
gested. In the case of the first patient, the lungs were 
his weakest organs ; these had not the vital force to 
contract upon and drive back the current intruding 
on them, so the fluid forced itself into arteries and capil- 
laries, and gorged them; this is Pneumonia; the other 
parts saved themselves alone through their superior 
vitality; they possessed the capability of resistance and 
antagonism. In the second case the pleura was the 
weak part ; in the third, the abdominal viscera ; in 
the fourth, the muscles of the back. 

We have, then, our four patients, all laboring under 
congestions, all afflicted through a common derange- 
ment of their circulatory systems; the principle in- 
volved in all being precisely the same. If just here 
may be accomplished the restoration of the deranged 
equilibrium, the four will be well on the third morning ; 
if such equipoise may not be secured, one out of the 
four will most likely succumb, a second be converted 
into a life-long invalid ; the third and fourth may escape 
with more or less injury. 



ADDENDUM. 



251 



What can be done? The indication is to relieve the 
overburdenetl part. How ? 

We will take the lung as our example. The organ is 
full, overfull, of blood; the man is drovvning from the 
engorging fluid ; the vessels and capillaries of the part 
cannot contract upon themselves to their own emptying 
because of this overfullness which is the destruction of 
their tonicity ; assist now to get away any part of this 
excess, and nature will take care of the balance. To 
get away part of this blood is then the object. This 
may be attempted in any way that promises to fulfill the 
indication. First, if the feet of a man be placed in a 
bucket of hot water, it is soon remarked that the parts 
grow red and engorged; this is because the capillaries 
are enlarged, and the blood, by gravitation and attrac- 
tion, has filled every part. This blood must come from 
somewhere ; it comes as much from the overfilled lung 
as any other part ; the lung thus, perhaps, unburdened 
to the limit of its contractile power, the trouble is 
ended. A single hot footbath, or a repetition of these, 
has saved a multitude of lives; one might not count 
them. 

A second principle of relief to a congested part is to 
get into bed and drink hot tea until thrown into pro- 
fuse perspiration. Now, as perspiration is the water 
of the blood, a man cannot sweat without casting off 
so much from the volume of the blood. In this way 
congestion is often speedily relieved. 

A third manner is found in reducing the volume 
through the use of what are called hydragogue cathar- 
tics. A dose of Epsom salts, for instance, may reduce 
the quantity of water in a man's blood to the extent 



252 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



of a quart, and this, in a congestion, might very well 
be his salvation. In conjunction with the depletory- 
medicine the physician almost invariably prescribes 
opiates ; this is with the object of soothing and quiet- 
ing the irritated and worried nervous system. 

A man recognizes he has taken cold through a sense 
of feverishness and heat that takes possession of him. 
This is likely his very first symptom; it is the condition 
of a simple deranged circulation ; at no particular point 
is there especial derangement, but the system at large is 
in a state of irritability. A quieting, soothing influence, 
any one may recognize, is just now the indication ; it 
is really the case that the nervous center, like an ill 
officer, has become fussy from some fright, ordering, if 
you please, the troops here and there, without appar- 
ently any good reason. If the center was less impress- 
ible, or a trifle more indifferent, nothing would be 
felt to be wrong, — indeed, nothing would be wrong. 
Anything which a man has recognized to be soothing 
to him is here in place ; few things are better than 
lemonade made very acid, and if, in conjunction with 
this, the patient will take, on going to bed, twenty 
grains of the bromide of potassium, the chances are that 
next morning he will get up well. If he does not, yet 
feels no worse, or it may be a little better, then he is 
simply to continue his lemonade and potassium through 
the day, at least two lemons to be consumed with the 
first, and fifteen to twenty grains of the latter dissolved 
in a wineglass of water, three times repeated during 
the day. Under such a course it is much more than 
likely that the circulation will be found to calm itself 
as do the waters after a storm. 



ADDENDUM. 253 

We are, however, in our lesson, to look at the oppo- 
site aspect of the matter ; perhaps the patient grows 
worse instead of better. A sense of fullness is felt in 
the head, or oppression in the chest. This is because 
a weak part is being overflooded, — the weak point, 
physically, of the individual. A man can always learn 
of such weak point through a cold. He has now the 
condition and indications found and described with 
the four Rowers. Now is the call for relief loud and 
pressing. It is the condition of a country overrun 
and overburdened with its own troops ; these must be 
gotten away, all of them, and the quicker the better. 
Here, then, is the demand for the hot foot-bath, the 
sweating medicines, the diuretics, the cathartics, and, 
if the individual be of full habit and plethoric, it may 
be that it shall be necessary to destroy the troops in 
bulk by bloodletting. This last, however, is seldom 
necessary ; proper generalship will save both country 
and troops. 

This, then, is a cold, and the principle given is that 
on which it is treated. To this extent has the reader 
learned of medicine and become indoctrinated in 
physianthropy. 

To the inquiring reader it will not be without interest 
or profit to advance one step farther, and to consider 
the pathological expressions of inflammation. This 
shall complete for him a little circle, yet, in itself, a 
full one. 

The term Inflammation is derived from two Latin 
roots, — **in," within, and "flammo," to burn, — and 
signifies a heat, or burning. It is, as we have expressed 



254 



ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 



it, a perverted condition of the circulation, and may be 
more or less complete, or marked. The phenomena 
which characterize such perversion of the circulation, 
or Inflammation, are, as we see them exhibited on any- 
affected part of the external body, Redness, Heat, 
Pain, and Swelling. To understand the expressions 
of these phenomena, is to understand Inflammation. 
First, then, as to the redness. Blood is red. If a very 
little red pigment be put into a large quantity of white, 
it is more than likely we shall fail to perceive that the 
shade has been altered ; increase the red, however, and 
the white shades until, at length, the mass shall be red 
and not white. If one looks at his hand, he recognizes 
that it is a white with a red shade ; the white is the 
natural color of the part, and the shade is of the blood ; 
the hand of a dead man, in which there is no circula- 
tion, is white. If, now, the hand is hurt, the blood, on 
the principle referred to, comes rushing to it from every 
part of the system ; thus it quickly grows red, and the 
more the congestion, — that is, the more blood, — the 
redder it becomes. Redness, then, is simply the pres- 
ence of blood. 

Heat. — This has a twofold explanation : first, the 
temperature of the blood itself. A little blood, such as 
circulates naturally in a part, is not felt to be hot, be- 
cause its temperature is modified by the atmosphere im- 
pinging on every part of the superficies of the body ; but 
when excess of blood is sent to any part, when in bulk 
it is poured out, then the quantity antagonizes the re- 
frigerating influence. This is one source of the heat 
felt in an inflamed part. A second is friction. In 
inflammation the blood rushes along the vessels with 



ADDENDUM. 255 

a greatly increased velocity ; the pulse of the part is 
felt to be double or treble ; velocity, antagonized, 
correlates itself into heat. 

Pain. — Every part of the human system is plentifully 
endowed with nerves. Pain, in inflammation, results 
from the pressure of the excessive bulk of blood upon 
these nerves. The most simple illustration may be found 
in an aching tooth ; the center of a tooth is an ivory- 
bounded cavity, in which exists what is called its pulp, 
or flesh ; in this pulp ramify arteries, veins, and a deli- 
cate nerve. Now, we have only to imagine an accident 
which shall inflame this pulp, by which we have seen 
that we mean the sending to it of an excess of blood, 
to recognize that the nerve would be crowded and 
worried; pain is its expression of such worriment, and 
whatever might be the modification made in a nerve 
through the long persistence of an inflammation, the 
primary expression of pain has only the single meaning 
of pressure, as witness the immediate cessation of such 
pain upon the removal of pressure. 

Swelling. — This, imprimis, depends on the excess of 
blood in a part. An ounce of anything would neces- 
sarily make a greater volume, if uncompressed, than 
would half an ounce. Second, swelling is caused by 
effusions ; when a blood-vessel is overdistended, the 
water of the blood, or seruni, as it is termed, oozes 
through the attenuated coats. Lymph, another element 
of the blood, also is efl'used, or secreted. When a 
swelling is of serum, it is elastic and like a water bag ; 
when of lymph, it is doughy and pitting. 

These, then, are the expressions of the phenomena, 
and thus are they to be understood. Inflammation not 



256 ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN. 

unfrequently relieves itself through an effusion. A 
patient suffering from an inflammatory attack breaks 
out into a profuse perspiration, and his trouble thus 
finds end. So, oftentimes, is pain relieved through effu- 
sion, and the whole train of a local disease aborted. 
Swelling, then, is seen to be a very simple matter, not, 
as a rule, furnishing any source for alarm, but rather 
the reverse. 

I come now to take leave of the reader, and, in doing 
so, am minded to ask him to remember the mask of the 
incognito we have met under. If one has listeners, it 
is pleasanter to tell his thoughts than to keep them to 
himself. If the talks and reflections of these "Odd 
Hours" have been at all relished, or have had found in 
them any import of good, it might be that, on a future 
occasion, objection will not be felt to another visit from 

John Darby. 



